Robert Stone:

… With Willie and Jeannette Eason, we’re going to be talking about the history of Sacred Steel. Willie, I got a hold of Charlie Storey, and he remembers you. First of all, he couldn’t hear too well. I talked to him on the phone. He couldn’t hear too well. And he hardly remembered Troman. He didn’t remember going to his anniversaries or anything, because he’s 75 now.

Willie Eason:

They called him. They nicknamed him the Mayor of Brooklyn.

Robert Stone:

The Mayor of Brooklyn.

Willie Eason:

In fact, if you go and talk to somebody about religious or gospel singing or any group, especially in New York, because most all of them was working to try to get, to go to New York. New York had a big name. And it had a lot of churches, and they had a lot of ministry, ministry singing and all. And Charlie Storey was well known. You ask any minister there, a gospel minister, or holiness minister, or Baptist minister, if you said, “Charlie Storey,” they’d knew him.

Robert Stone:

Was Storey affiliated with any particular church?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, but I can’t-

Jeannette Eason:

He was in the church, but I can’t remember which one he was in, but what he was, he was a promoter.

Willie Eason:

… Yeah, he was a great promoter.

Jeannette Eason:

Every year, he would have the Charlie Storey day.

Willie Eason:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

The Mayor’s day.

Robert Stone:

He still has that.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. And he’d bring in all the groups like that.

Robert Stone:

He still does that.

Willie Eason:

And everybody would recognize him.

Jeannette Eason:

Ada was telling me he still have his business open too.

Robert Stone:

His furniture store?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative)

Willie Eason:

Yeah, yeah.

Robert Stone:

His furniture store.

Willie Eason:

At one time, he had about three of them, and he’d just go from one to the other.

Robert Stone:

Right. Well, now let me ask you, Willie, about Troman and his group. Now, I’m getting some of the dates straight, because Ella Mae can remember when the kids were born, Troman’s kids. And so, she said that Vivian, the youngest, who’s deceased, she was born in ’39. And that Troman left shortly after that and went to Brooklyn. And we know he died in ’49.

Jeannette Eason:

Had to be.

Robert Stone:

We haven’t determined his, she’s working on getting his date of birth. She thinks she can get that. So, that would be from ’39 to ’49, did you get over there to Brooklyn where he was staying? Did you see the group? Is that where you saw the group? Or did they come to Philly? Troman’s group?

Willie Eason:

Well, they played, especially in that area, New York and Philadelphia. From there, back into Washington, but New York, when you said, “Charlie Storey,” well, that’s the crowd right there, because they know what kind of groups he’d bring, or get. So-

Robert Stone:

So, did Troman’s group play for Charlie? Did he promote them? It sounds like?

Willie Eason:

… Well, he was going to do it. They would be on the program. They would be on the program.

Robert Stone:

The Mayor’s, for his Charlie Storey day? Is that what you’re talking about?

Willie Eason:

No, not just Charlie Storey day. In other words, Charlie Storey would help, like you’ve got your group. She’s got her group. I’ve got my group, but all of them is always calling Storey to find out where’s the program, because they know every Sunday there’s two or three programs, what not, and people pick out which one they’re going to, because it’d be on the radio, what not, lot of publicity.

Robert Stone:

Do you remember what stations?

Willie Eason:

Not off hand. Not off hand. See, one thing, if I was there, because I got to be known pretty well myself on account of the guitar. I got pretty well known. And not only that, get out, played on street corners and everywhere. So, this is how I got so much publicity, but the groups, that’s why they called him the Mayor of Brooklyn. That’s what they named him.

Jeannette Eason:

Excuse me. When you went there to play the first time in the church, and Troman heard you play, where was that at?

Willie Eason:

This was at a big Baptist church, but I can’t recall the name of it. That’s when I got next to Plummer and all of them because-

Jeannette Eason:

In Brooklyn?

Willie Eason:

… It was in Brooklyn, because-

Robert Stone:

At his anniversary.

Willie Eason:

…. Yeah, evidently. Evidently. And so, they discounted me, but when they really paid attention, Plummer got carried away with the blues, “I don’t believe this.” And because the people gave me such a rile. They stood and what not. I played. I’ll never forget the song, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. And a lot of times, well, you’ve seen me do it a couple of times. I would say, “What did you say?” And I talked to the guitar. And then I make like the guitar is answering me back. You see? And so, Plummer got carried away too, after he’s seen the audience got carried away. I remember, it was an enthusement to me. I was enthused myself, the way that people just got carried away.

Willie Eason:

And Jesus Remembers When Others Forget. I remember that was one of the songs that we sang, Jesus Remembers When Others Forget. He’s my captain, and I trust Him, yeah. Okay, that was Jesus Remembers – I don’t know why, I sung these songs so long-

Robert Stone:

When you played at that anniversary for the first time…

Willie Eason:

… At this particular anniversary?

Robert Stone:

Yeah. That was your first real public appearance?

Willie Eason:

That was the biggest one.

Robert Stone:

Right, okay.

Willie Eason:

Because that place was packed. Even all in the back out, out in the back, in the back of the church and what not, people were standing. They couldn’t get no seats. Back, I can remember that.

Robert Stone:

Now, and this was before you went with Lockley.

Willie Eason:

Oh, yeah.

Robert Stone:

Okay. But this, I’m just trying to establish, he moved there in ’39. So, he was living in Brooklyn by then, right?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

So, it couldn’t have been no sooner than ’39.

Willie Eason:

Right, right.

Robert Stone:

So, you were 18?

Willie Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

See, before we were thinking you were about 16, but we’re getting these dates-

Willie Eason:

Right, right.

Robert Stone:

… A little more accurate now. That’s fine.

Jeannette Eason:

Well, now if you go back to correct yourself to get back to the date, your first tour with Bishop Lockley, you were 16. So, it couldn’t have been ’39 when he went to New York. What I’m saying is, it was ’33 when the music came into existence, and he went there for lessons, you understand? And the group formed, so…

Robert Stone:

No, we don’t know that. And matter of fact, I’m sure it’s later that ’33.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, right, right.

Robert Stone:

Barbara, or Ella Mae, remembers that Troman was taking and giving lessons. Of course, she was a little girl at the time.

Willie Eason:

Right, right.

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

When Barbara was born, which was 1938, one thing she remembers is that they had a city nurse from the health department to help her mother, a young white girl. And she started taking lessons from Troman. So, he was already teaching then, in ’38. So, that means he probably started taking lessons some time earlier. But I wouldn’t imagine-

Jeannette Eason:

And even at that, his age had to be older than… Because he’s older than Willie.

Robert Stone:

… We’re trying to nail it down, but he was born in about 1900, so he was 38 years old or something like that at that time.

Jeannette Eason:

Because he was [crosstalk 00:08:48]

Robert Stone:

How do you know you were 16 when you went with Bishop Lockley?

Willie Eason:

Well, don’t forget in Philadelphia, to finish school, which I finished at the 12th grade.

Robert Stone:

You did finish?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Went over the deadline, where they give you a diploma, that was, I was in the 12th grade.

Jeannette Eason:

You were in the 12th grade.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. I did all of that when I start to hitting, you know how we say it, with the holiness people. And I start to playing. Most of mine was like 75%, 65% or 75% of mine, I just pick it up. Because you haven’t been in the service, so they start to singing, you listen to them. I’m listening. I played by ear. And I just have that where I can pick it out and look like I know where that string is, and I’ll pick out the words that you just said.

Robert Stone:

Let’s get back to school, though.

Willie Eason:

Okay.

Robert Stone:

You graduated from high school?

Willie Eason:

Yes, I did.

Robert Stone:

You did?

Willie Eason:

Yes, I-

Robert Stone:

You finished the 12th grade?

Willie Eason:

… Yes, I did.

Robert Stone:

So, you had to be 17 or 18, right?

Willie Eason:

Right, right.

Robert Stone:

You start in the first grade when you’re six.

Willie Eason:

Right, right.

Robert Stone:

You finished now. You had told me something before about that you weren’t interested in school once you started getting around Bishop Lockley and all that.

Willie Eason:

Well, I tell you-

Robert Stone:

So, you didn’t drop out of school. You finished.

Willie Eason:

… No, I didn’t. My mind was focused, because I could remind myself that… It was like, just like they call it, God gifted. They use these words, because Plummer got, I remember I told you. Well, you remember this. When I went to that big program they had in Brooklyn, I’ll forget that. And Troman, people were starting to pushing me, because they heard me play A Closer Walk With Thee, and the way I played it and what not. And I talked to the guitar. And to them, it sounded like the guitar was saying what I was saying. And that’s when Plummer noticed it. And the people went up, so until Troman, because they were always kidding each other. I remember that. They liked to tease and kid each other a lot. And he said, “I can’t believe this. You did this here, Eason. I can’t believe this. Listen to him.” And the people just went up. The guitar was saying what I was saying.

Robert Stone:

But you were out of high school by then.

Willie Eason:

Oh, yes.

Robert Stone:

And you didn’t go with Lockley until you were done with high school?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. I was out of school then.

Robert Stone:

Okay. We’re getting closer on these dates now. Now, you made this big splash at Troman’s anniversary.

Willie Eason:

Right, that’s where I made the biggest splash of my life.

Robert Stone:

You told me that you still had to overcome shyness. What I’d like to do is make this transition from where you play at Troman’s anniversary, that was your big, people really started to notice you?

Willie Eason:

Right, right.

Robert Stone:

And then, how did you get from there to go on with Bishop Lockley, and going on the road with him?

Willie Eason:

In the Church of the Living God.

Robert Stone:

Was Lockley at that anniversary?

Willie Eason:

No, no, no. Uh-uh (negative) In other words, they was like a different denomination. Don’t forget. They’re more than one of five groups called the House of God. The one I believe was the House of God, Church of the Living God. See? And the full name, the House of God, which is the Church of the Living God. Pillar and Ground of the Truth. That was the name. That’s what it was registered as.

Robert Stone:

Right. I understand, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

But it was Lockley church that his parents were going to.

Robert Stone:

Okay. Your parents-

Jeannette Eason:

His family.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, yeah, my family.

Robert Stone:

… Now, Lockley was in Philly. Then he moved to New York. Is that right?

Willie Eason:

That’s right. That’s right.

Robert Stone:

In other words, your parents belonged to Lockley’s church in Philly?

Jeannette Eason:

Right, yeah.

Willie Eason:

To that organization. Yeah, to that organization. The House of God.

Jeannette Eason:

But Lockley, he didn’t move to New York. He had churches in New York.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, that’s right.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, churches.

Robert Stone:

He was the bishop.

Jeannette Eason:

He lived in Philly.

Robert Stone:

Okay. He always lived in Philly?

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Willie Eason:

No, he didn’t always. He lived partially at the time in Brooklyn. He originated from Brooklyn and then immigrated. You know what I mean? What I hear about him, he had churches in Philly. He had churches in Wilmington, Delaware.

Jeannette Eason:

Jersey.

Willie Eason:

Jersey, yeah. Washington, you know what I mean?

Jeannette Eason:

[crosstalk 00:13:59].

Willie Eason:

Yeah, and each bishop, there’s about 10 to 12 bishops, and each one had…

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

What’s it called?

Robert Stone:

[crosstalk 00:14:09] So, how did he get notice of you? How did Lockley come to notice you and want to hire you or craft you?

Willie Eason:

The thing is after listening and going to Troman’s program and what not, it was like the spirit just delivered into me. In other words, I’m listening to you talking now, but I had a good remembrance, and I get a pencil and paper. Some of the words and some of the sentences, I would fill in myself to make it rhyme. You follow me now?

Willie Eason:

See, in other words, I’m trying to think of a couple of lines of just something.

Robert Stone:

That’s okay. But how about Lockley? When did he start becoming… He was your bishop at the House of God?

Willie Eason:

Well, most of my kindred, half of my kindred, like sisters and brothers. Don’t forget I had a sister that died in Philadelphia, Rev. Earline Jackson. In other words, she was in Bishop Lockley’s-

Robert Stone:

She was under Lockley.

Willie Eason:

… Yeah, under Lockley. Several different people and ministers and what not, they was under Bishop Lockley. He was the senior bishop.

Jeannette Eason:

I’m sure Bob remembered how you say, Lockley came to your mother and asked permission from her to get your [crosstalk 00:15:42].

Willie Eason:

Yeah, because I was still under my parents, too.

Robert Stone:

Okay, so by that time you were playing in your own church quite a bit?

Willie Eason:

Well, now, don’t forget. I wasn’t no bishop or no elder.

Jeannette Eason:

No, no, no, no.

Robert Stone:

You were just a kid.

Jeannette Eason:

No, he’s just talking about playing in the services.

Willie Eason:

Oh.

Jeannette Eason:

Because then J.R. came along, bishop’s son. Roosevelt was in there.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

So, this is how. He want to know how you got started on the road, traveling, all down through Florida, South Carolina with Bishop Lockley.

Willie Eason:

One time, we went up. We was at a program. This was at a big church, had to be a Methodist, because most of them, the Methodists and the Baptists, they had more churches than the normal. You may go to Presbyterian and what not, but some of them, those organizations, had much more members than this one. And more than this one. But I got to be known in the House of God, Church of the Living God, Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Got known in a lot of Baptist, because there were plenty of Baptist churches. Plenty of Methodist churches.

Robert Stone:

And this is before you went with Lockley?

Willie Eason:

Yes.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Willie Eason:

Yes, yes. Yeah, so in other words, back when they had a program, and when you hear Charlie Storey, but because Charlie Storey, they called him the Mayor. I know if you go in Brooklyn now, they’ll say, “He’s the Mayor.” Put him as the Mayor. He’s the big head. In other words, if you want to have a good program, and you want some, don’t forget these groups, if Charlie Storey tell them to go there, give them a couple of quartets. Don’t forget, he was the head over.

Jeannette Eason:

All right. Now let’s get back to Bishop Lockley. You’re still thinking about Charlie Storey.

Willie Eason:

I’ve got to bring him in once in a while-

Jeannette Eason:

No. You affiliated with Bishop Lockley for so many years.

Willie Eason:

Oh, yeah. Well-

Jeannette Eason:

Can you go back and… You bought your house when you was, what? 22 years old? When you got married? Or 23?

Willie Eason:

… No. Most of it around between 20 and 22.

Jeannette Eason:

Okay.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, this told me 22.

Jeannette Eason:

This is when you married Alyce.

Willie Eason:

Alyce, right.

Jeannette Eason:

Okay. You know of Bishop Nelson, right? You knew of Bishop Jewell? I’m trying to help you think. Right? So, when did you start on the road with Bishop Lockley? Going from state to state. Remember you come down here, and you’ve seen the black and white faucets, and you wanted to drink from the white faucet. You couldn’t do it.

Willie Eason:

Bishop Lockley heard me playing and singing on the corners. Somebody brought him to the corners. One of the first ones, it was up at 19th and Columbia Avenue, where I’m looking at it right now.

Jeannette Eason:

Philadelphia.

Willie Eason:

Philadelphia. That’s right. And I would play right down from Ida’s Restaurant. That was my sister’s restaurant. I forget the name of that street there right next to 19th Street. And I used to go around that corner practically every Saturday.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, you’re talking about Ridge Avenue.

Willie Eason:

It was Columbia Avenue.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, but Columbia Avenue and 19th-

Willie Eason:

Right, 19th, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

You used to go on the corner of Ridge.

Willie Eason:

Ridge Avenue. Yeah, I played there.

Jeannette Eason:

And sing there.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

But what-

Robert Stone:

He saw you on the streets?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Right.

Robert Stone:

Okay. Now, was this after Troman had left Philadelphia?

Willie Eason:

No, Troman was still-

Robert Stone:

Still in town?

Willie Eason:

… Still in town. That’s right. But I wasn’t in that category.

Robert Stone:

No, no, no. But Troman was still in town.

Willie Eason:

Yes.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

But this is where after he’s seen you play on the street. Then he asked your mother, who was in church under him, your family and your sisters and all, could you get on the road and start with the group? What they call it? The Prayer Band or something?

Willie Eason:

Well, somebody-

Robert Stone:

The Gospel Feast Party.

Jeannette Eason:

Huh?

Willie Eason:

… Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

The Gospel Feast Party.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, that’s it.

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, yeah. All right.

Willie Eason:

That was the name. That was the name. That’s what- Bishop Lockley’s Gospel Feast Party.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. So, he got permission. He got permission for you to go with them.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

I’m trying to think. How long were you with them? Because you was still with them when you got married to Alyce and bought your first home.

Willie Eason:

First home, that’s right.

Robert Stone:

Well, see, it’s all starting to add up better, because he’s told me a couple years or so. And if he was maybe 19 when he went with them, he was out of high school, so he was probably 18. You were born in June, right?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Robert Stone:

So, you would have been 18 when you got out of high school.

Willie Eason:

Pardon me, July. July.

Jeannette Eason:

No. June is your birthday. You know. You know your birthday.

Willie Eason:

Well, look-

Jeannette Eason:

They told you it was July, because it wasn’t on the…

Willie Eason:

… Well, yeah, but see-

Robert Stone:

His point is when he was going to school, they thought it was July. It don’t matter.

Jeannette Eason:

It doesn’t matter.

Robert Stone:

It means you would have been, June or July, you would have been 18 when you graduated. You didn’t fail any grades, did you?

Jeannette Eason:

No.

Willie Eason:

No, no, no.

Robert Stone:

I didn’t think so.

Willie Eason:

I think I skipped one grade. I don’t know what grade it was, but they skipped me.

Robert Stone:

Well, see, you skipped a grade.

Jeannette Eason:

That’s going back to 17.

Willie Eason:

17.

Robert Stone:

So, now you’re 17.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

Because I know around 16 or 17 was when they made the first trip to Florida, and he was so shocked about the segregation. And he went to drink from a fountain, and the bishop told him, “No, you can’t drink from that fountain. You’ve got to go to that one that say colored.”

Willie Eason:

But don’t forget that, what’d you call that? What’d they call that when the different nationalities, what you call it?

Jeannette Eason:

Segregation.

Willie Eason:

Well, the segregation, so much of the segregation was going on at that time.

Jeannette Eason:

Because he had never seen nothing like that. He was raised up in Philadelphia.

Willie Eason:

When Bishop Lockley, see, I was playing on the corners, but the programs thing came about first, “You ever played so and so, and so and so?” Like that, “This one getting it.” And so, I played. They took me to a couple of churches, and I played, and then I was introduced to Charlie Storey at a program, one of my brother’s program, Troman.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. And this is when I was in Brooklyn. Had to be in Brooklyn, but that’s what Charlie Storey heard. And that’s where Charlie Storey lived.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

And all that. That’s where they call it… That’s what, what did they call him there? They called him. He’s the President of Brooklyn.

Robert Stone:

Mayor.

Jeannette Eason:

Mayor.

Willie Eason:

Mayor. That’s right. You got it.

Robert Stone:

We got it. We all got that one.

Jeannette Eason:

Now-

Robert Stone:

Okay, we’re getting somewhere.

Jeannette Eason:

… So, how are you going now?

Robert Stone:

One thing, I’ll ask this. I’ve already asked it, but do you remember? Did Troman’s group have a name? Did they call them something?

Willie Eason:

I tell you who could have gave you that better than me.

Robert Stone:

Tell me.

Willie Eason:

Ella Mae’d know.

Robert Stone:

She doesn’t remember.

Jeannette Eason:

She doesn’t remember. See, I think that Ella Mae was, she had to be about 16, 15?

Robert Stone:

She’s only 75 now.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Troman in Brooklyn.

Robert Stone:

So, she’s…

Jeannette Eason:

She’s five years younger than Willie.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, so she was like 12 years old?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

When he left?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

1939.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:24:04]

Robert Stone:

He was old…

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

When he left. 1939.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

When Troman started taking the lessons, she was only 10 years old.

Willie Eason:

The accordion guy was-

Robert Stone:

Loveland.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, he was the guy, you must have put [laughing]. Yeah, Loveland, right. And the one to play the Spanish guitar was Henry.

Robert Stone:

Now, Ella Mae remembers all the last names, because she was even littler than you.

Willie Eason:

Well Mae is close to me.

Robert Stone:

And she remembers his name as Mr. Smith. So it must’ve been Henry Smith. That’s what she remembers him as Mr. Smith and Mr. Loveland.

Willie Eason:

One of them was Smith.

Jeannette Eason:

So it could have been Henry.

Willie Eason:

The accordion guy, he was hump back, he had a thing growing back. And…

Robert Stone:

That was Loveland.

Willie Eason:

Loveland, that’s right.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. You don’t remember the name of the group, did they have any flyers or posters or placards and stuff like that?

Willie Eason:

If anybody would have something like that, you would get it from Ella Mae.

Jeannette Eason:

Ella Mae don’t have anything.

Robert Stone:

She thinks, she didn’t mention who it was, I couldn’t ask her that. She said, the widow of one of her brothers, might have a picture. She said she had a picture of Troman’s group. But she said she couldn’t find it after-

Jeannette Eason:

After you was talking about it. Ada, she just moved over to Philadelphia, but she still worked in Manhattan.

Willie Eason:

She just started.

Jeannette Eason:

She would go to Brooklyn often. And I’m wondering, would it be in a library. Just concerning the Hawaiian use?

Robert Stone:

I’d say it’s a long shot. Normally only if somebody collected it and submitted it, as far as I know…

Willie Eason:

Just a minute. You remember when I came? He wasn’t married, he was in the process. I came there, and didn’t I bring a lady over with me once?

Jeannette Eason:

You talking about her name was Jones or something.

Willie Eason:

Jones. Yeah.

Robert Stone:

That’s the woman that Troman stayed with, the wealthy woman?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Kind of wealthy a little bit.

Robert Stone:

Older than him?

Willie Eason:

Yes.

Jeannette Eason:

Yes.

Robert Stone:

She played the bass.

Willie Eason:

She what now?

Robert Stone:

She played the upright bass?

Willie Eason:

No, she didn’t play them. She was a minister herself, like a bishop like. She was over different ministers in churches.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

She was more of a spiritualist.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. More of a spiritualist.

Robert Stone:

Okay. So she wasn’t a musician?

Willie Eason:

No, she wasn’t a musician.

Robert Stone:

Ella Mae thought she remembered her playing the standup bass.

Willie Eason:

No, she didn’t play no music.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. And she said she lived in a big house.

Willie Eason:

She owned property and whatnot.

Robert Stone:

Did you ever go over there?

Willie Eason:

It’s like, well these women, they’d be writing notes, big program, big audience and whatnot. And you know how they be sitting out taking names, I want to get to know that guy and all that kind of stuff.

Jeannette Eason:

Well tell me this Bill, I don’t know if they told Bob about this or not. The way he died, and all. But then you did meet the mother of they half sisters and brothers, Juanita, she had just got lost from her kids, she didn’t want nothing to do with these kids.

Robert Stone:

This is a woman that Troman was with, after he left his wife.

Jeannette Eason:

After he left Agnes.

Robert Stone:

Agnes.

Jeannette Eason:

And her name was Juanita, I know she had, I think it was two boys and a girl. And the girl wound up in Philadelphia, but they don’t know how she got killed or what. And they call us in Jersey, first they call Earline, about it being a Eason. Earline was well known in Philadelphia. [crosstalk 00:28:42] Wait a minute. When they call Earline, Earline in turn called Willie, and Willie hadn’t seen this woman in some years. So he went to Deacon Bass Knight. Am I right?

Willie Eason:

Are you talking about Gladys?

Jeannette Eason:

Gladys. I got the name Juanita in there some kind of way.

Robert Stone:

Gladys.

Jeannette Eason:

Gladys was the woman that had the three kids for Troman.

Willie Eason:

For Troman in Brooklyn.

Jeannette Eason:

Deacon…

Willie Eason:

Bass Knight.

Jeannette Eason:

Bass Knight told him that exact address.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. In fact, I don’t know, he came there but he told me, gave me the address whatnot.

Jeannette Eason:

Bergen street.

Willie Eason:

Bergen Street.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

That’s where Troman had been living? Now was he still with Gladys when he died?

Jeannette Eason:

We don’t know, that part I don’t know.

Willie Eason:

She kept tamping after him.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Jones.

Jeannette Eason:

Well, you know what it is Bob, why you can’t just say really put your finger on it, because of the groupies. When it come to men, and with the guys, don’t let Ella Mae know I told you this. Because when they found Troman’s body, he was completely naked. No clothes, no music, nothing could be found in his house.

Robert Stone:

She says, she remembers family, some of them went over there to where he was living. And she said, they asked the lady, I assume the landlord or whatever, about his instruments. And she said that he had pawned them, and she said no way would he ever pawn his instruments.

Jeannette Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

She said he wasn’t that poor.

Jeannette Eason:

No, they couldn’t find anything of his in the house.

Willie Eason:

Couldn’t find his instruments. And me, I was able to find more than any of the rest of them, all of his children, trying to find out… But Gladys is the…

Jeannette Eason:

I don’t know if she’s still living or not. I don’t even know if this deacon, we were talking about it other day riding along, if he’s still living.

Robert Stone:

Let me stop. [Tape stops]. … Gladys is deceased.

Jeannette Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

For sure, we don’t know, she could be alive.

Willie Eason:

Well, I thought she was… I thought similar to the same thing. But the thing with Bass Knight, but I went to thinking of who was the head members in the church before that, because that church did wind up splitting. When the church split, some of them go to that pastor, some go to that pastor.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

To different… Like you got a church, they may go out of my church and they may go to your service, they like your service and they’ll join. That’s the way they had a way of joining.

Jeannette Eason:

You couldn’t remember what church he was in. Was he under Bishop Lockley or who?

Willie Eason:

No, he wasn’t under Bishop Lockley at the time. In fact, he was just mostly a musician.

Jeannette Eason:

Bass Knight?

Willie Eason:

No Bass Knight was a deacon, he was a head deacon.

Jeannette Eason:

But can you recall what church we was in?

Robert Stone:

Was Bass Knight his-

Willie Eason:

House of God.

Jeannette Eason:

Pillar and Ground of Truth?

Willie Eason:

Pillar and Ground of the Truth, that’s right.

Robert Stone:

That was his first name, was Bass?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative)

Robert Stone:

Last name Knight, he was a deacon in the House of God.

Willie Eason:

Bass Knight.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

Bass Knight.

Robert Stone:

And he was, he was in Brooklyn?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative)

Robert Stone:

He lived on Bergen street?

Willie Eason:

Bergen.

Jeannette Eason:

No she was living on Bergen…

Willie Eason:

She was living on Bergen street.

Robert Stone:

Gladys.

Willie Eason:

Gladys.

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative)

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Willie Eason:

It’s a shame but if I was around in that area, because… I found Gladys, everybody looking and-

Jeannette Eason:

She didn’t let her kids, and nobody know where she were.

Robert Stone:

I mean.

Jeannette Eason:

And the kids, they met up with Barbara and Ella Mae and him, a couple of times. But then Barbara says she hasn’t seen them in years.

Robert Stone:

My only… I don’t need to get into all the goings on, what I’m interested in for the book, is to establish a timeline. And also, I would love, love to talk to somebody who remembers seeing that group, who might remember the name of the group, more about where they played. Because see, you were in Philly, or on the road.

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

He was in New York. I mean Ella Mae, once he left Philly, she doesn’t know much about him.

Willie Eason:

You just told me something.

Robert Stone:

But did they come back to Philly? His group came back to play?

Willie Eason:

So you need somebody out of Brooklyn, like Charlie Storey.

Robert Stone:

Right. But he didn’t know nothing. He’s-

Willie Eason:

Oh, you saw him.

Robert Stone:

I talked to him.

Jeannette Eason:

He talked to him.

Robert Stone:

His mind isn’t good. I don’t know if he even remembered Troman, he remembered you. I said Troman played at your anniversaries and your programs. He said, nah, I don’t…

Willie Eason:

But the thing Charlie Storey used me a lot. So he used me to different programs.

Robert Stone:

I’m trying to get him to remember Troman, see. And he couldn’t remember Troman. Well, he wasn’t in real good shape, he talked real slow, couldn’t hear good, he sounded really tired.

Jeannette Eason:

Ada said last time she’d seen him, she had like get right to his ear or something.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. I mean, I was- He had- repeating stuff-

Jeannette Eason:

…talk to him.

Willie Eason:

Well, I was surprised when she had talked to my daughter later either. Well, I know he knew all my children.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

He knows my children, especially my children by my first wife.

Jeannette Eason:

I don’t know, I know-

Robert Stone:

Well Chuck says, I think I might have told you about this, they’re having the New York State Assembly this weekend.

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Bishop Campbell’s big assembly. So I talked to Chuck and Phil and see, so all the people from all over, some of them who used to live in Philly, some of them in New York, they’re going to see who they can find, who might know something about Troman’s group.

Jeannette Eason:

Well don’t forget about to mention this man Bass Knight. Because if he was going to the same church, if he’s still living…

Robert Stone:

He might be there. Well, let’s call him right now. We’ll call Chuck right now. But I actually what you’re saying is that that Barbara and Ella Mae might lead us to somebody, who might lead us to Gladys. If she’s still alive.

Willie Eason:

No-

Jeannette Eason:

No, the only way you could get through to her, would be if you mention Leroy.

Robert Stone:

To Gladys.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. She’s dead set, she want nothing to do with the rest of the family. Willie made a visit there-

Robert Stone:

Now, do you think it’s likely that she is alive? Because I mean, Troman would be 100 now. I mean, was she younger?

Willie Eason:

Oh yes.

Robert Stone:

She was younger.

Willie Eason:

Yes.

Robert Stone:

I figured, you usually don’t leave your wife for an older woman.

Willie Eason:

No, no. You brought my mind back to how I found… I was looking for Gladys.

Jeannette Eason:

I told you it was due to the fact, her daughter, they found her dead in Philadelphia, and this was after Gladys just turned all of them loose. Because it must’ve been a lot of control to see, and all… And she, as a mother, she’s working night and day, to raise the kids, and they must’ve done her awful bad because when a mother turn her back on kids, something has got to be bad there. And she told him, when he went to them, deacon Knight… And gosh this had to be like the late ’70s. Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Can you remember-

Jeannette Eason:

Wait, let my clock tick right now. It was the late ’70s because it was at 28 Church Street. We didn’t move out of there until ’82 when we got burned out. So this had to be in the ’70s, anywhere from…

Willie Eason:

You remember me finding Gladys.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, from ’75.

Willie Eason:

Through Bass Knight.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. And Earline, they contact Earline in Philly, because Earline was well-known, she was a Eason,

Willie Eason:

Remember my sister, the minister, she was a minister.

Jeannette Eason:

…from the people in the city to pick up the bodies, the morgue, and they contact Earline. And Earline at the time she was sickly, she had no money or nothing like that, to come down and claim the body. That’s why they was trying to find the closest of kin, to come and claim this girl’s body. And that’s when Earline called him, and he found Gladys. And Gladys told him, said, I’m sorry, but not my daughter.

Willie Eason:

Well, you remember I found a boy and a girl, this was on Bergen street, Gladys living on the third floor, I remember that. That’s come to me. Because of Bass Knight, how I found Gladys.

Jeannette Eason:

None of her kids at home at that particular time.

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

All of them was out. And from what I understand, they were much younger, they was almost right long, right under Vivian. These kids was like, 20, 21. I think the girl that died was like 26. And this was in the ’70s.

Robert Stone:

They were probably younger than Vivian even.

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, yeah. [crosstalk 00:39:26] Vivian was then 39. So it had to be on in to the ’40s like that. Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Just like I love them, they love me, when they see me they all come and hug me.

Robert Stone:

Now let’s go back to Philly. Troman, when you got interested in Hawaiian guitar, Troman had his own house, and his family there. And I know where he was living, Ella Mae told me. He was at 1528 North 11th street. Where were you living at that time? Where was your family? Do you remember?

Willie Eason:

Do you have any kind of month?

Robert Stone:

When Troman was in Philadelphia.

Willie Eason:

Right, when he was in okay.

Robert Stone:

When he was in Philly, and then you would go over there, and sneak on his guitar and stuff.

Willie Eason:

Well, what I’ll be doing, I’ll be sitting if I’m… Just like we sitting here now, you go for lunch or something, whatnot, and I’d be teasing around him and Plummer… And so the thing is when they do, I go and sit down and be messing around the guitar. But don’t forget everybody can’t do it, but if you get a sound like that, if you get a certain sound like that, you wind up trying to put it all together.

Robert Stone:

Okay. But how close did you live to Troman? Did you live… Do you remember your house street?

Jeannette Eason:

Was Troman near your mother’s house?

Willie Eason:

No. The last place he lived was in Philadelphia. He was in West Philadelphia. I lived in North Philadelphia.

Robert Stone:

Okay. So it was quite a way?

Jeannette Eason:

11th street would be in Philadelphia?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

I’m sorry, West Philly?

Willie Eason:

No, not in West Philly.

Jeannette Eason:

11th street would be more closer to where-

Willie Eason:

North Philly.

Jeannette Eason:

North Philly is where your parents lived there. Where did your parents live then?

Willie Eason:

North Philly.

Jeannette Eason:

What’s the street? Can you remember?

Willie Eason:

The Thompson street one, 1215 Cabot, C-A-B-O-T, Cabot Street.

Robert Stone:

Do you have a street?

Willie Eason:

You know, if I had-

Robert Stone:

What was that address you just gave me. What was the house number?

Jeannette Eason:

1503.

Robert Stone:

1503.

Willie Eason:

Cabot Street.

Robert Stone:

Right. I got a Philadelphia map-

Jeannette Eason:

What was the house where the ghost ran you down the steps? Was shaking Earline, in the ghost house. Ghost come over, Earline was shaking and all, you all ran downstairs. 1103 was who address?

Willie Eason:

Can you remember the street?

Jeannette Eason:

Flora Street.

Willie Eason:

Flora.

Robert Stone:

1203.

Willie Eason:

F-L-O-R-A, 1203 Flora.

Jeannette Eason:

If you hadn’t got that, I said 11 to make him say the 12.

Robert Stone:

That was the house you bought?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

That was the house you bought.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. One of the first ones, I eventually went into real estate.

Jeannette Eason:

But you weren’t too far from your parents house then.

Willie Eason:

No, because they lived on Thompson Street.

Jeannette Eason:

Okay.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. That’s where…

Robert Stone:

The house on Cabot street.

Jeannette Eason:

Cabot must’ve been, when they moved out of Cabot on Thompson.

Robert Stone:

What was it Thompson Street.

Willie Eason:

Thompson. T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. Because we was just up to Thompson and something. This last funeral, who was that… For Charles, your brother.

Willie Eason:

Charlie.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. Thompson and, can’t work it out, Thompson and something.

Willie Eason:

But…

Robert Stone:

Okay. So Cabot Street was before that?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

We just come from there, we have a funeral not long ago, I guess you-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, he know, you told him about it.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

But now Troman lived, Ella Mae gave a address, 11th street. What was it 11?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, like a split house, let’s see was like a split up. You know like, [inaudible 00:44:13] was part of the house.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, 1528 North 11th Street. Well, all I’m trying to get to… At the time you were in your early teens, you didn’t have a car or nothing, did you walk over to Troman’s house?

Willie Eason:

Well, I would use different boys and things that knew me. Like in the church you had these mothers, and different people in the church, well they all took me as a great player, a musician, whatnot.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. But I’m talking about when you got started.

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah.

Robert Stone:

How did you get over Troman’s house? Did you walk over there from your house? When you lived at [crosstalk 00:45:02].

Willie Eason:

I had a lot of assistance, I had a lot of friends because there was a lot of them was trying to learn how to play and whatnot. That’s why it is so hard to take my mind back in there, because a lot of them was sticking around me, and trying to learn how to play the guitar.

Robert Stone:

This was before you knew how to play.

Jeannette Eason:

What he is trying to get to is…

Robert Stone:

Did Troman live down the street or something, and you walked over to his house to visit him, or you had to take a bus across town or?

Willie Eason:

Well, mostly I was-

Jeannette Eason:

If he put the guitar down, this is what he’s trying to understand. You would take it, when Troman wasn’t looking, and take it and try to play it. But can you remember if this was in Troman house, or was he in your mother’s house at the time?

Willie Eason:

It was in my mother’s house, and father, it was in Troman’s house.

Jeannette Eason:

Because don’t forget, you haven’t got out your mother’s house yet.

Robert Stone:

So you’re still in school. You’re a school boy, you’re 13, 14, 15, whatever you were, 16.

Jeannette Eason:

Because you say you could remember how you used to steal it, and take it into the room, and pick it, and then try to put it back before the Troman catch you with it.

Willie Eason:

Well, no, it would be out there in the living room and whatnot. And he would be gone to, the shop or something like that.

Jeannette Eason:

Without permission to play it.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, without permission.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

I would get down there and I’ll go, don’t forget I’m looking at them, with the string and now that sound distilled in here.

Robert Stone:

Right, I got that.

Willie Eason:

Just like now, because let my mind run over just mostly anything. I wish I could, just to show you. That I- [crosstalk 00:47:11] All I have to do, don’t forget its 12 different chords on the Hawaiian.

Robert Stone:

We’ve got it. Tell me about Henry.

Willie Eason:

Henry.

Robert Stone:

Now Henry was older or younger than you?

Willie Eason:

Was that Henry Eason or Henry Nelson? Henry Eason?

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

He was younger than me.

Robert Stone:

Okay. And tell me about him playing, how did he get started playing?

Willie Eason:

In other words, some of it was the similarity of the same way I did, going on street corners.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, but I mean, how did you show him some stuff?

Willie Eason:

Oh yes. Oh definitely. Oh definitely.

Robert Stone:

I’ve heard. Did he play more like you, or more like Troman?

Willie Eason:

More like…

Jeannette Eason:

No, he played more like…

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:48:04]

Willie Eason:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

And then he played more like Henry Nelson. His playing was not like Troman’s.

Willie Eason:

I don’t think he could-

Jeannette Eason:

He couldn’t play as good as Troman.

Willie Eason:

No, he couldn’t play as good. No, no.

Jeannette Eason:

It was even jealousy, built up. Even when-

Willie Eason:

Well, that’s true.

Jeannette Eason:

After I got married to him, between him and Henry. Henry was a type, he figured he knew it all. And he even fought him, and told him he was on his corner, and what he doing on his corner, singing and all.

Robert Stone:

So he-

Jeannette Eason:

This was after he had taught him.

Robert Stone:

Henry played some street corners?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. But Henry was more like, wild songs. The only good song Henry really played was Give Me My Flowers.

Willie Eason:

Give Me my Flowers While I Yet Live.

Jeannette Eason:

And you know, that was the…

Robert Stone:

The Consolers.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, his tenants.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, that’s right.

Robert Stone:

So that wasn’t until the ’50s, they didn’t write that until then.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Early ’50s.

Jeannette Eason:

And he would play this song-

Robert Stone:

Was he a pretty good singer?

Willie Eason:

He wasn’t bad. He was pretty good, because he was accepted in our program.

Robert Stone:

Not as good as you, though?

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Robert Stone:

Not as good as you though?

Willie Eason:

Well, I don’t pin flowers on the… I let the audience…

Robert Stone:

I’m kidding.

Willie Eason:

I’ll work on that thing down there. Making runs and all like that.

Jeannette Eason:

But he, Henry would, [inaudible 00:49:33], just to get the people attention, and he tried to sing one or two songs then he’d play it, like, just the song without singing. But one of his main song on the street corner, You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide. The next time you go to that woman, you won’t knock no more.

Jeannette Eason:

You know? And that’s what he did.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

To get the people laughing.

Willie Eason:

You may run and hide, slip and slide,

Jeannette Eason:

Slip and slide,

Willie Eason:

Trying to have a date with your neighbor’s wife… [Singing]

Jeannette Eason:

[singing]

Robert Stone:

Now, where’d you get that? Where’d that song come from?

Jeannette Eason:

Henry. Henry created that song.

Willie Eason:

My brother Henry. He was younger than me.

Robert Stone:

He made it up?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Really?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Because that’s the way, mostly. I hear you sing a song, I sit there. I ignore it, like I’m not listening, but I can add words to that.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

I can add words to that, and make a song out of it.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative). Now called him Big Eason, right?

Willie Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

Henry, they called him Big?

Willie Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

I heard they call him Big Eason.

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Jeannette Eason:

Just Henry.

Willie Eason:

Just Henry. This is my brother, I ain’t talking about Henry Nelson, now.

Robert Stone:

No, no, no. They didn’t call him Big? I thought they, I thought his nickname was Big Eason.

Jeannette Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

No. How heavy was he?

Jeannette Eason:

He was pretty heavy at one time. Because he was over 200, about 250, or something like that. But then he had sugar diabetes, and he lost a lot of weight like that. But he, I mean he ate good, but I never heard nobody call him Heavy, or Big Henry. Mostly just Henry.

Willie Eason:

He carried some jealousy with him, but I taught him.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, but it was mostly Henry.

Robert Stone:

How much younger than you was he?

Willie Eason:

That’d be about three years younger.

Jeannette Eason:

Wait a minute, who was between you and Henry? Joe?

Willie Eason:

Joe.

Jeannette Eason:

Joe was between you and Henry?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Right?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

So if he, say, two and two, that would be four years.

Willie Eason:

We sure had a big family, oh boy.

Robert Stone:

I assume you did.

Jeannette Eason:

I would say anywhere from four to five years younger, than Willie. Henry was young, though.

Robert Stone:

Now tell me about Leroy and how did Leroy Eason, Troman’s son. Now, according to Barbara, Troman taught Leroy. He was the first one, she said, that he taught, of the family. But she said that she said that Leroy didn’t stay with it.

Willie Eason:

She hit it halfway right. Well, maybe a little bit more than halfway.

Jeannette Eason:

Well Ella Mae was the oldest.

Willie Eason:

Of Troman’s children, Ella Mae was the oldest.

Jeannette Eason:

And age wise, that’s why I say… I’m like this, Bob, if you can’t remember, don’t put something false in there, to carry it over.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

So now, Leroy was much younger than you. Leroy had just graduated from school and got that job with the government.

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah, that’s right, he did work for the government.

Jeannette Eason:

Then he went to jail, for fraud.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And come out. When he come out, we was there in Philadelphia. When he came out, and started working back for the city again, right?

Robert Stone:

Well we know his dates of birth and death. We’ve got that from the-

Jeannette Eason:

What date did they give?

Robert Stone:

I can’t remember where we got it from his funeral, the program book-

Jeannette Eason:

Because they should be on that. But I know he’s much younger than Willie.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, what I’m interested in is how did you… You recorded more with him than anybody. You did those four records, eight sides, eight numbers. For Queen, King and Queen.

Willie Eason:

Well, Leroy went with me a lot on the street corners.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, that was on the streets and all, and then Ella Mae, he took Ella Mae a lot.

Robert Stone:

Why? So, Leroy traveled with you? Or just in Philly?

Willie Eason:

He went with me out of town, a couple places. But mostly around in town there, because we wanted extra money, all I had to go out to some street corner, go to somebody’s door, and knock on there, whatnot. Explain to him what I’m doing, and whatnot. It was religious, all religious songs, and whatnot. And this is the way I do. And the people, they never turn you down. Most of them, 90% of them-

Robert Stone:

You have to, the reason you have to talk to them, you needed electricity, correct?

Willie Eason:

That’s it. And they run the cord through the window, or through where I can, it was a plug in.

Robert Stone:

Now this was homes, as well as businesses. Is that right?

Willie Eason:

Well, it was… I’ve done this at my own house.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

I’ve done that at my own-

Robert Stone:

So I mean, when you go knock on somebody’s door was it business, or a home, or either?

Willie Eason:

Well, it’s either. Because I know at the time, when I, when the Soul Stirrers first heard me, it was about one, two, three doors from the corner of 58th, in Chicago. This was in Chicago. And I put the cord, went in the yard, in their back door. Where they put the clothes on that steamer, and push the machine down. My lights and electric came out of that.

Robert Stone:

Out of like a dry cleaner’s?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, a dry cleaner’s. Yeah. So one of the, the main Soul Stirrer, he owned that cleaner’s.

Robert Stone:

Which, who is that? Medlock, or…?

Willie Eason:

Wait a minute, Medlock. Maybe it wasn’t. Medlock and another one. But Medlock was the main one. Medlock.

Jeannette Eason:

Harris, you had Harris, Medlock.

Willie Eason:

They were the ones that, when they heard me playing on the corner, one had told other one. One told the other one. And I wind up, Harris, who was the manager, had me up on 58th and Prairie. And that’s where, Harris, they knew them, and knew he was one of the Soul Stirrers, and he plugged my cord in there. So I’d have electricity. Back when I was doing that Pearl Harbor and Roosevelt.

Robert Stone:

Now, was that the dry cleaner?

Willie Eason:

Dry cleaner, right. That’s right. As I remember somewhere. If they was here, one of them was here. Because we was all close friends. We was all really close friends.

Robert Stone:

So Henry played on the street corner some, too. But let’s go back to Leroy. Why did you go with Leroy to record?

Willie Eason:

To where?

Robert Stone:

You went when you recorded in Cincinnati.

Willie Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

For King and Queen.

Willie Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

And why did you pick Leroy?

Willie Eason:

Because he was the only one that ever rehearsal with me, and practice with me.

Robert Stone:

Is that right?

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Robert Stone:

Was he a good singer?

Willie Eason:

Yes. Oh yes. Oh yes.

Jeannette Eason:

Oh his voice got much better than what you hear on that tape.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

That boy could upset a house.

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah, he could upset a house.

Robert Stone:

How would you describe his singing? Was he smooth? Rough? Or loud, or…?

Jeannette Eason:

No.

Willie Eason:

You’ve been around holiness people, so you know.

Jeannette Eason:

A smoothness, and yet and still, Leroy was a little bashful along with it. So it was hard to even get him to sing in front of a crowd. But if he come out singing, it’s very smooth, and he could get the attention of everybody. And I mean, his voice was beautiful.

Willie Eason:

No way he take with the public.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

Takes with the public. Because I know you done seen, you know what I’m trying to say, taking the public. Because all you have to do is look at the audience, and see whether you satisfied them or not.

Robert Stone:

Now did he, when you met him… It sounds to me, I’ve got taped copies of one or two of those records, from when you call yourselves the Gospel Trumpeteers, you and Leroy. It sounds like one of you is, probably him, on at least one song, is playing a regular Spanish guitar. Did he play Spanish guitar too?

Willie Eason:

No. Was that Eberhardt?

Jeannette Eason:

It had to be Eberhardt.

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Jeannette Eason:

It had to be Eberhardt.

Willie Eason:

If it was Spanish guitar, it had to be Eberhardt.

Robert Stone:

So he might’ve gone with you to record, but he didn’t sing. It was just you and-

Willie Eason:

That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. You’ve been doing some-

Robert Stone:

Do you know how to spell his name? His last name? Eberhardt?

Jeannette Eason:

E-L. E-H-A-R-T, is it?

Willie Eason:

B-E-R-T.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. Eberhardt.

Robert Stone:

E-B-E-R-H-A-R-

Willie Eason:

H-A-R-T. Hart, yes. Eberhardt. That’s right.

Robert Stone:

Roosevelt.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

So he was probably the one that played the Spanish guitar on here. On your recording with the Trumpeteers?

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Robert Stone:

He went to Cincinnati with you?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Okay. Can you describe Eberhardt? Chuck told me that he saw him. He thought he looked like Duke Ellington or something.

Jeannette Eason:

Well, that height.

Willie Eason:

He was, in other words-

Jeannette Eason:

Complexion, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

He was a lover with the girls. The girls fall for him easily. He’s very-

Jeannette Eason:

And he had the complexion of Duke Ellington. And he wasn’t an ugly man. He was good looking.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative). Was he sharp-

Jeannette Eason:

Very wavy hair.

Robert Stone:

Wavy hair, sharp?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, sharp dresser and all. And a sweetie. That’s how he got on.

Robert Stone:

Smooth talker?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, yeah. That’s-

Robert Stone:

This guitar isn’t too loud in the mix on that tape. Of course, it’s from the 78, so it’s scratchy. It sounds like he’s playing some pretty cool stuff.

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah. Well don’t forget, he used to background me, just me and him sometime. I’d take him out, because he understood my- I understood him-

Jeannette Eason:

Many times him and Willie went on the street corner.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, just me and him.

Robert Stone:

Now did he always, did he play acoustic, electric, or…?

Willie Eason:

Spanish. Electric Spanish.

Robert Stone:

Now was it like an arch top?

Willie Eason:

The large… Wooden.

Robert Stone:

Did it have a round hole in it, or-

Willie Eason:

The round hole.

Robert Stone:

The F holes.

Willie Eason:

No, the round hole.

Jeannette Eason:

No, the round hole.

Robert Stone:

So it was a flat top, what we call a flat top?

Willie Eason:

Not no flat top like that. It had a hump in it.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative). Okay. So, but with a round hole, it didn’t have the F holes that look like that.

Willie Eason:

But he was-

Jeannette Eason:

He could also-

Willie Eason:

He was a good background, though, for me.

Jeannette Eason:

I also play the Hawaiian guitar.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Because he had 10 strings.

Robert Stone:

He had a 10 string one.

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative). He used to come over, and him and Willie play together. He tried to get Willie on his. Willie’s like, “Nah, you play yours, I’ll play mine.”

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

And when they had the concert over here, when the old evangelist came down here to a… Oh, gosh.

Willie Eason:

What, speak up. Maybe I can help.

Jeannette Eason:

The center, over here. Enoch Davis Center.

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

When they was doing the Sacred Steel, Make a Joyful Noise, they had here in Saint Pete, on a Wednesday night. And he went over there. So I had told him, I said, “Didn’t nobody invite you. You know?” And I was feeling kind of funny about letting him go, because I don’t like to buck in on nobody’s program.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

But Ed’s girlfriend is the one that called me and told me, said it would be at Enoch Davis Center.

Willie Eason:

Oh, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And they wanted to get people that was free to learn about the Hawaiian steel, sacred steel guitar. And it was your boy that did the emceeing, at Winter Park, the first night. No, that’s Saturday. No, that first night, the one that yo-

Robert Stone:

Elton. [Tape stops]

Robert Stone:

You told me before, and I don’t have it on tape. Is that you told me you had to overcome shyness. You were shy. I mean, today you really like to perform, but you were telling me when you were young, you had to overcome, you were shy about performing.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Can you talk about that some?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Well what it was, when I first started playing, whatnot. I’m just explaining this to you. In other words, the thing is, come to me, how clear can you make that sound? Then I heard what sounds I’ve made. Then I go back. This was through my rehearsals, and all. And, the closer I can make it sound to you can understand it, words. That’s what I went after, like a-

Robert Stone:

But where are you shy?

Willie Eason:

Never shy.

Robert Stone:

You told me before you were. You weren’t shy as young man?

Willie Eason:

Well, you could call it shyness, because I didn’t just get right up there, let’s start right up. Like I can get right up there now, I couldn’t. But now you call on me, I’m ready.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, but when you were a young man, did you worry over it any? I mean, what?

Willie Eason:

Never, never.

Robert Stone:

No.

Willie Eason:

No. Because I know you done heard me sometime, on certain songs, I talk to the guitar. Just like you and me. I said, “What did you say?” You done heard me to do that.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

Never heard. I said, “You hush your mouth.”

Willie Eason:

And then the crowds go up. See, a certain thing, you know I’m doing it for that audience. And I see what they go for. And I see you go for that, then I go back again. And-

Robert Stone:

I swear he told me he was shy when he was a young man about playing, that he had-

Jeannette Eason:

Stage fright.

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, he did.

Robert Stone:

Did you have stage fright?

Jeannette Eason:

He didn’t want to get in front of a big audience. He was trembling, and all. He would be afraid to step out. And then finally he got out of it. Yeah. Probably just can’t remember what he told you.

Willie Eason:

Excuse me. I didn’t even know, how did this guy find out, unless he was at that convention? I keep wondering.

Jeannette Eason:

Who’s that?

Willie Eason:

The guy that [inaudible 01:05:21]

Jeannette Eason:

He was the one that-

Robert Stone:

He was the emcee.

Jeannette Eason:

… the emcee of the program.

Willie Eason:

Oh my wife said something, but- [inaudible 01:05:28]

Robert Stone:

Did you know he studied under Ghent? He studied under Ghent in the state apprenticeship program, [inaudible 1:00:05:38]… But see, then he moved to Georgia, to Atlanta, and he moved back to Florida to Apopka. And then he, by the time he did that program, he had just moved to Fort Pierce.

Willie Eason:

Ain’t that something?

Robert Stone:

Well, I don’t know where. I think he’s living in Fort Pierce, but he said he was going to be pastoring in Fort Pierce.

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, okay.

Willie Eason:

Because I kept wondering how did he know that I was going to be there?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, but where he struck the audience and all, because this kid got a double neck guitar.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

And Willie don’t play double neck.

Robert Stone:

He only plays one neck of it, though.

Jeannette Eason:

So he got up there and played it, so now, and Jethro called Edward, because now he done got Jethro scared. They had go on up and play a double neck guitar. So Edward called me, “Mom.” I ain’t got home- “Mom, did you hear the thing? Did you know Dad was playing a double neck?”

Jeannette Eason:

I said, “No.”

Jeannette Eason:

He said, “Well, they on the way home now, so Jethro will tell you about it.”

Jeannette Eason:

He said, “What is he doing on the double neck?” So I laughed. “Well what’s so funny about that?” I said, “Edward, Roosevelt had a double neck.”

Willie Eason:

I’m glad that guitar was tuned in A tuning.

Jeannette Eason:

And so don’t forget, you had… Willie used to teach music.

Willie Eason:

Was that Eberhardt?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative). Willie used to teach music in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. And a lot of these guys had double necks.

Willie Eason:

I even showed some of them, when they was getting started off. They’d go there, and I’d show them certain things, because they ask me certain questions. And I’m not that selfish. You know what I mean? And whatnot. Just like this one fellow we talking about now. I had to shake his hand again. Those people stood in line to shake my hand. They was just a men in white. You hear me, Bob?

Robert Stone:

Oh yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, they stood, and they shook my hand. And the handshake was real.

Robert Stone:

Yep.

Willie Eason:

I couldn’t honestly… Well, how did they? And I was telling my son’s girlfriend. I said, “You know what, if you hadn’t told me, I would have came by, and I wouldn’t have been selfish [inaudible 01:08:17] and whatnot. And here I am, he done put me on the program. And here’s this long line of people coming.

Jeannette Eason:

But me, I don’t usually… I had to go out and be with the 91 year old lady that night. And I don’t usually let his music go, unless I’m with him. I mean you can mess up. Like I left him home, he didn’t come to Gainesville. Because since then I don’t let it go out of my sight. Everyone here will use one of the amps, for his shows. But that guitar don’t get touched, see? And that night I had told him, he said, “Would it be all right if I go over there?” I said, “Yeah, you can go.” I said, “Well, I’m going to tell you now, I don’t want the music to go.” So I get back here, Bob, and after, and they tell me what all went on.

Willie Eason:

It wasn’t my fault.

Jeannette Eason:

No. And they said, what all went on. I said, “And you took your music?” “No. I didn’t disobey you. That music was there. I didn’t take that music with me. I played his music.” And that’s when Edward, he got in the conversation, “Oh my God…”

Willie Eason:

I was just hoping it was in A tuning.

Jeannette Eason:

But he said when he got up there, Jethro said when he got to the church and he said, “Oh no, it’s in my key.”

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

And the crowd went up and that was [crosstalk 01:09:41].

Willie Eason:

Yeah, the crowd went up. Crowd went up. Crowd went up. I said, “Oh my God.”

Robert Stone:

Well, let’s, again, just for the purposes of getting the whole timeline straight.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Yeah, matter of fact, where it sounded like going back to your Queen recordings here, in Cincinnati.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Now, how did they come? Do you remember how the guys, it was the King label…

Willie Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

King and Queen. How did they come to say, “Willie, let’s go to Cincinnati and make records?” Where did they see you? Do you remember? Or how did that-

Willie Eason:

Wasn’t that in New York, where the guy was driving down some… What would that be? Lenox Avenue. You remember that?

Jeannette Eason:

That’s the one, they tried to get you to change to blues. Now Cincinnati, you’re going way before my time.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. Well, it was ’46.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Some guys got out that car and run over. Remember I even played on the radio the next day. They made me-

Jeannette Eason:

That was in New York.

Willie Eason:

That was in New York?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

The guys, they jumped out the car and come running.

Jeannette Eason:

Well, tell me this, was they… All right, just like the company from New York came here, but Bob, was they headquarters in Cincinnati?

Willie Eason:

I think that’s what it was.

Jeannette Eason:

And they was picking up talent in New York, and you did it there?

Willie Eason:

And I guess I come as a surprise.

Robert Stone:

But they saw you in New York?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative). You were playing on the corner, or something? Remember?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, he was on a corner. And he said, a man backed his car all the way up.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And had him to go to the studio.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, that’s what I come to the studio. When I do a number in the studio with- these guys was from record companies or something. It was affiliated with, you can tell they was affiliated with-

Robert Stone:

So you took, I mean, you took Leroy with you.

Jeannette Eason:

Leroy.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

And I’m just looking at my notes here on the first, one of the things you did with them was, “Oh, What a Time.”

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

And that’s the one where it sounds like there’s somebody who’s playing a Spanish guitar and it’s kind of like some nice passing chords. That’s the one you think would have been Everhardt?

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:12:04]

Willie Eason:

King and Queen. That’s the King and Queen label.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, right.

Willie Eason:

Out of Cincinnati.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

I tell you something. I’m trying to think of all the- you know…

Robert Stone:

Ella Mae remembered that you went to Cincinnati. Because you see, Leroy went with you.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, Ella Mae went with him to because she was the money girl. Counting his money when he got through singing. But, now, let’s go back to the funeral home.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, that’s where this lady let me play up on top of the garage.

Jeannette Eason:

On top of her garage and the hearses-

Willie Eason:

Remember they had called the cops and everything?

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Willie Eason:

And the cops, what did the cops do? After the people… Had the crowd and the streets were so crowded, whatnot. See, I was sitting up on top of the garage. I know you seen these low garages where they could-

Jeannette Eason:

They drive the hearses underneath.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, it was a hearse garage. Where they’d drive the hearses there.

Robert Stone:

This was in Philly?

Willie Eason:

This was-

Jeannette Eason:

Cincinnati.

Willie Eason:

Cincinnati.

Robert Stone:

Cincinnati.

Willie Eason:

And I was up on top of this garage. This is where I got at. And the lady that owned the funeral home, let me plug in her funeral home, run my cord there. And-

Robert Stone:

And you sat on top?

Willie Eason:

On top.

Robert Stone:

And played.

Jeannette Eason:

It was like a flat top. Yeah, like a little patio over the garage.

Robert Stone:

Right. Well, that’s good because people could see you.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, well that’s what they- yeah.

Robert Stone:

And this was in Cincinnati?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. And people just running. You could see them running down the street. That’s right. It was really something. The little hotel I stayed in was halfway a block up the next street. Since you mentioned, it brings me back.

Robert Stone:

Now, this was when you went to make the recordings? then you played on the street, too? Or you played on the hotel? Was that at that time or another time?

Willie Eason:

I’m trying to see when did I play “That Old Water Time” and “Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt.”

Robert Stone:

1946 was when you recorded it for King and Queen.

Willie Eason:

Yeah it’s around the same, it had to be.

Jeannette Eason:

I’m thinking it was more in Cincinnati-

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

…than it was the recording because it’s another company that I’ve heard him mention. They moved to Chicago. He had a big a Doberman pincher in his office.

Robert Stone:

Well, the other company he recorded for was Aladdin.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Aladdin, out of Chicago.

Willie Eason:

I remember that.

Robert Stone:

Because that’s where you did with The Soul-Stirrers.

Jeannette Eason:

Right. Aladdin in Chicago.

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

So this one had to be in Cincinnati.

Robert Stone:

King, I know it was.

Jeannette Eason:

The one that wanted him in New York. Because what he was telling you, when he was singing on this garage, it was so many people so the police had come up and put a roadblock to block the block off.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. That block-

Robert Stone:

Now we’re back in Cincinnati.

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Willie Eason:

That’s Cincinnati, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

So, evidently, that’s where that record was made.

Robert Stone:

Okay. Now do you think, was it because they saw you playing there?

Jeannette Eason:

And maybe because they pulled the crowd or something.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. Okay.

Willie Eason:

This was on top of the undertaker, all that was at the undertaker.

Robert Stone:

You don’t remember the name of that funeral home, do you? That’d be good if you did.

Willie Eason:

Good as I know-

Robert Stone:

Streets, or anything? How about the hotel you stayed in? Remember the name of that?

Willie Eason:

It was more like a… What’d you call them house?

Robert Stone:

Boarding house?

Willie Eason:

Boarding house. I sure did, I stayed on the second floor.

Robert Stone:

Now, did Earline come with you over there?

Willie Eason:

Who dat?

Robert Stone:

Earline?

Willie Eason:

I don’t remember. That’s my sister, Earline. I don’t remember her being… She wasn’t-

Robert Stone:

I mean, Ella Mae.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, well, now that’s better. Ella Mae, Leroy. They was there. Because don’t forget, they aunt stayed there in Cincinnati.

Robert Stone:

Oh, is that right?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, they did, so when they came… When I find a corner and I go play on that corner, I ain’t got to worry about no crowd because I got my crowd.

Robert Stone:

Right. And Eberhardt come with you?

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Robert Stone:

In Cincinnati?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

So that could have been him on that record.

Willie Eason:

Right. Right. Right.

Robert Stone:

Okay. We’re getting somewhere. It ain’t easy.

Willie Eason:

But Eberhardt, we become really close friends.

Jeannette Eason:

They like brothers.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, and they all thought of it, like nothing… Like we’re very good friends.

Jeannette Eason:

But New York, he was down on 7th and 125th street. When you was playing that music and this guy come and got you and took you to the studio?

Willie Eason:

The white guy.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. He even let you play it in the studio and all.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

But what he wanted him to do was record blues.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, but I told them I wasn’t-

Jeannette Eason:

And he said, “Oh Lord.” And he said, “No, no, no.” He said just change it to “baby.”

Willie Eason:

Yeah. He was trying to get him to change over. But that wasn’t my shtick. You know what I mean? And what I looked like making a record like this, one of my first times?

Robert Stone:

You don’t remember that record? Was that Savoy?

Jeannette Eason:

Savoy Records. Yes.

Willie Eason:

Savoy!

Jeannette Eason:

That’s who it was. But he-

Robert Stone:

But you never did record… You didn’t record for them? Okay.

Willie Eason:

No, I didn’t. Because it was [crosstalk 01:17:34].

Robert Stone:

There’s no records of you ever making a record for Savoy. So that was why.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Do you know about when that was? It was during your marriage, right?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-uh (negative). This was just before our marriage.

Robert Stone:

Okay. So when was that?

Jeannette Eason:

What? ’40- Oh, no. It was later than that, man. When he got you there in New York. It had to be around ’50, ’52.

Robert Stone:

Okay, that’s good.

Jeannette Eason:

The year ’50, ’52. And then that was just before we got married.

Robert Stone:

Okay. Now, now this ought to be easy because you can remember a lot of this. I want to establish… Well, I think we know when you separated or got divorced from Alyce, Alyce Nelson. And then, then you guys met in Ocala.

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Okay. When was that? When did first… Do you remember when you first met Willie?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative). In 1952.

Willie Eason:

She’ll not never forget that.

Robert Stone:

And was that when you gave him the note?

Jeannette Eason:

No. 1952 in the church. They always had me organizing for the Christmas play.

Robert Stone:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jeannette Eason:

And my father was acquainted with Bishop Nelson.

Willie Eason:

That’s my first wive’s father.

Jeannette Eason:

So that’s how I came in- I was a piano player. And we had a group of singers. My sisters and brothers.

Robert Stone:

The Davis Family.

Willie Eason:

The Davis Family, right.

Jeannette Eason:

And I met him like that. And then we all, we went to service.

Robert Stone:

So did you meet him at… Was that at Mount Canaan?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, at Bishop Nelson’s church.

Robert Stone:

Out there by Silver Springs.

Willie Eason:

He said Mount Canaan was the country town outside of Ocala.

Jeannette Eason:

Oh no, that’s in Silver Spring now, right?

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Mount Canaan? Yeah. No, this was Fort King. [crosstalk 01:19:46].

Willie Eason:

Fort King. Yeah. Don’t get Broadway and then Fort King.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Broadway and-

Willie Eason:

No, see look. Broadway was the main street, Black businesses and what not.

Jeannette Eason:

Fort King was the cross street. And the church sits, what, on that next corner for Broadway?

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

So one block off Broadway?

Jeannette Eason:

Right. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Willie Eason:

House of God. They got the sign there. House of God. But I noticed that-

Robert Stone:

Is it still there?

Jeannette Eason:

I don’t know, because they said the city was buying that property in and then Mary was telling me-

Robert Stone:

That’s okay. I was just there last Friday. But anyhow, so that was about 1952. You were in church at House of God on 14th street, a block off Broadway. You played the piano. Did you sing, too, with your family?

Jeannette Eason:

Along with my sisters and brothers.

Robert Stone:

Right. And that’s when you saw this guy. Was he playing the steel?

Jeannette Eason:

He was playing steel guitar, but he was married.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative). He was married to Alyce.

Willie Eason:

Alyce. Right.

Jeannette Eason:

I ain’t say nothing-

Willie Eason:

She ain’t say nothing – [laughing].

Robert Stone:

So when did he get the divorced? Do you remember?

Jeannette Eason:

They broke up in April.

Robert Stone:

Of what?

Jeannette Eason:

Of ’53.

Willie Eason:

Fifty what?

Jeannette Eason:

’53. Bishop Nelson, her father. He was trying to get Willie locked up for child support? Because it was a bunch of stuff going on there. Incest and everything. So he was trying to get him locked up for child support. My father told me… Matter of fact, the night he was locked up, he had come to Tampa and traded in, what was that? A ’41 Cadillac?

Willie Eason:

Oh! Oh yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And you got what? The ’52 Cadillac, with the visor over it, the pea green Cadillac. And you drove it back to Ocala. When the Alyce shook your keys. You remember that, don’t you? Talk to me, you act like-

Willie Eason:

No, no, I’m giving you the nod. [crosstalk 01:22:10].

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah but I want you to say I’m right, you know. Anyway, that night we had a program. See what he’d done, he-

Robert Stone:

Willie and the Davis Family?

Jeannette Eason:

The Davis Family and Willie Eason was supposed to go to the, I think it’s the minister… Belonged to the Masons in Wildwood.

Robert Stone:

In Wildwood.

Jeannette Eason:

From Ocala. And this was a big program he had set up for us to go there. And the church was packed. So when my father drove round to his house, you couldn’t get up to the house because you’re got people from the neighborhood, crowding the streets and all. It was-

Robert Stone:

Your father drove up to whose house?

Jeannette Eason:

To Willie’s house.

Robert Stone:

Willie’s house. So you you weren’t living with-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. He was living Alyce.

Robert Stone:

With Bishop Nelson, or you had your own-?

Jeannette Eason:

No, he had his own home. What was your street there?

Willie Eason:

Well, don’t get… You talking about it… This was before I married Alyce?

Jeannette Eason:

No, this is after.

Willie Eason:

Oh.

Robert Stone:

Where did you live Alyce?

Jeannette Eason:

When you got the 1952 Cadillac.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. She have to help me.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. That’s right. Do you remember where you lived?

Jeannette Eason:

She took the things. It’s right down… Mary’s house, which is my father’s sister, was sitting here on this corner and you drive right down. And that was your house on that right-hand side. What was the name of the street?

Robert Stone:

The old Nelson home house?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-uh (negative). They was out, they had their own little home. Ocklawaha and what?

Willie Eason:

Sorry, I don’t recall it right off hand. I’m getting old now.

Jeannette Eason:

You can remember that ginger beer. You better come on here and-

Robert Stone:

But are you saying that him and Alyce lived near Mary Linzy?

Jeannette Eason:

No, no, no. My aunt Mary-

Robert Stone:

Your aunt Mary.

Jeannette Eason:

On my father’s side. Ocklawaha avenue at the time and I can’t think of the street.

Robert Stone:

That’s not a real big deal.

Jeannette Eason:

But he was living there with her. And Willie had purchased apartment houses in Chicago, singing on the street.

Willie Eason:

Well, I got into real estate.

Jeannette Eason:

So he was also trying to get her to leave here and go to Chicago. But that night, when he come up with the new Cadillac, we were supposed to go to this big church over in Wildwood.

Robert Stone:

A House of God church?

Jeannette Eason:

No, this was something like a Methodist church. Because I remember the guy, he had a big Lincoln and had that big Mason ring on his finger.

Robert Stone:

The minister?

Jeannette Eason:

Right. Uh-huh (affirmative). And when he got back and was getting ready to come go to the program-

Robert Stone:

When Willie got back?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. Alyce snatched his keys. Her and her sister-in-law Charles’ wife.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, Myrtle.

Jeannette Eason:

Myrtle. And they told him, no, they wanted to go to a movie. If he was going to leave out of town, they wouldn’t go to a movie that night, not him going to church. So that’s where the dispute came in. And when the police got there and all, well, he asked him… Everybody knew him because he sung right there in Ocala [crosstalk 01:25:26].

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah, every week.

Jeannette Eason:

You know, and they were shocked. And they was trying to calm it and on his car and all, and he said, “What’s happening here?” And he said, “Well, she got my keys and I got a program in Wildwood with the Davis family and I’m supposed to go there.” So but she wanted to go to the movies, it’s her sister in law, that’s pushing her up. And made me go to the movie.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Myrtle.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. So by that time he came over and he told my father, he said, “Look, Dad.” And he said, “I can’t go with David.” He said, “You see what I’m into here.” He said, “She got my keys and everything.” He said, “I was supposed to leave out of here, I don’t know, a couple of days later going to Chicago. Take care of the business up there.” And he told us to go ahead to the church. And when we got there people were standing even outside.

Robert Stone:

So you went without Willie?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, we went without him.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Jeannette Eason:

So he stayed and she tried to get him locked up. She told a lie, she said, he hit her. And the police officer, the white police, they told us they said, “No. If he had have hit you, that would have been the first thing come out your mouth.” He said but since it’s family feud between husband and wife, I can’t make her give you your keys. He said, “But I can give you authority to pull your car.” And that’s what he done. He pulled the car downtown. So the next morning my father told him who to call. It was drop the switch, wasn’t it? On the car where you could get it started. So don’t forget, they just pulled it down. They couldn’t get it started. And the man fixed it in that early morning, it had to be like the 1st of May. He’s almost doing-

Willie Eason:

That’s when I was getting ready to-

Jeannette Eason:

When you was getting ready to go back to Chicago.

Willie Eason:

Go back to Chicago.

Jeannette Eason:

And he came by my father’s house. And dad was fixing him breakfast. And mother and Bishop Nelson and Sister Nelson came back along then to try to see was he still in town.

Willie Eason:

Well, they came to me- it’s more or less- I saw the little family feud in there and all that. I loved the Davis family. I loved the way they handle themselves and whatnot. This was a little group of them. And they came, this was around Christmas time.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, that’s when we first came. But now at the house, Bishop Nelson took him off. Well see, I was 15. But at that particular time, your parents didn’t allow you to stay around the grownups talking. And I’m inside the house and they’re sitting on the porch. And Bishop Nelson came up and he told him to get in the car, come take a ride with him. And when he got in the car, evidently he must have told, no, he going talk right here. He never closed that door. Right? And when he got out, he was telling my father on the porch, he said, Bishop Nelson, didn’t ask him nothing about going back to his daughter, what you’re going to do about your wife and your kids. Nothing like this. What he asks about, how much money you’re going to send back to your kids. And he was hurt over that because he thought the father would try to get them back together.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. So what I believe in living with a girlfriend and a wife or two women, or being involved with two women. So what I done, no love affair, nothing that… It was a while before we-

Jeannette Eason:

And the thing about it, Bob, when I seen him crying, right?

Willie Eason:

Well, I just can’t help it. That’s a habit I got.

Jeannette Eason:

He’s hurt then he cry like a baby.

Willie Eason:

If I get hurt, I shed tears, I can’t help it.

Jeannette Eason:

I lived with my aunt down the street. That night I went and wrote him a letter telling him that I would make you a better wife. I’m trying to console him, not realizing I’m proposing to him. I only went to the fourth grade. So you could imagine that letter. But at the same time I had no boyfriend. Sex was nowhere in my life. I would support my father, my mother and my sisters and brothers working in the fields right out in Ocala. All right? So I wrote the letter and in the letter I told him… He kept the letter until we got burned out. I told him I would make him a good wife, keep his shirts, his handkerchiefs, his shoes shined. Because I know how to shine shoes. Right? All this clean for him to go sing on the street.

Willie Eason:

I was so enthused. I couldn’t believe it. Because she’s pretty- years younger than I am.

Robert Stone:

All right, so I want to get this straight. You gave him this letter as he was leaving?

Jeannette Eason:

As he was leaving on the way to Chicago.

Robert Stone:

On the way in Chicago, in the midst of all this strife.

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

Bishop Nelson, Alyce and his car. [crosstalk 01:30:56] His Cadillac was only a year old, right? So somebody wanted that car.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. And the other one was ’41. So it was what, close to 11.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Right? So what I done-

Robert Stone:

But he had traded that in, right?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. Over here in Tampa. And what I’d done, I took the note. His coat was on the porch over a chair, like that. So when I come up from my aunt’s house, I took the note and I pushed it down on the inside of the pocket. And I went on and I helped set the table, put the dishes on the table and everything. And my mother and father went into the kitchen. So that gives me a chance to tell him in his ear, “Look in your inside coat pocket.” But after I said that, I was running all the way back to my aunt’s house. Because I was so afraid that he was… You know how people would go to your parents.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

That he would say, I wonder what kind of note it is that your daughter told me to look at it in my pocket? Oh God, I would have been a dead person.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Jeannette Eason:

If he had said. So he said he was still crying and upset when he got… Because he went back by the house.

Willie Eason:

That’s a relief to me. If I shed a tear, it’s a relief. I get rid of whatever’s hanging, try to get rid of it. I’m just like that. It runs in my family.

Jeannette Eason:

He got up to Gainesville.

Willie Eason:

That’s when I got-

Jeannette Eason:

And went to gas up. And he said, “Wait a minute. That little girl told me she put a note in my pocket.”

Willie Eason:

Yeah. And I went in my pocket, I forgot it was even in there.

Jeannette Eason:

And he said he stood there and he read, and he started laughing. He said that gave him encouragement to keep on going to Chicago. But when he read it, he said, “Oh, she ain’t nothing but a baby.” But don’t forget, he was 31.

Robert Stone:

And you were?

Jeannette Eason:

15.

Willie Eason:

15. Yeah.

Robert Stone:

So, then you went up to Chicago and did you visits. And then it was sometime before y’all got married, right?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh yeah. Close to five years.

Robert Stone:

Close to five years. Where were you when you got married?

Jeannette Eason:

We were back in Florida.

Willie Eason:

Back in Florida.

Jeannette Eason:

Because he went to Chicago, we was migrating as farm workers to Pocomoke, Maryland.

Robert Stone:

Okay. Let me-

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:33:22]

Robert Stone:

… Goes to Chicago with the note-

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

… and tends to his business and then-

Jeannette Eason:

We left.

Robert Stone:

Then your family is migrating, doing agricultural farm work-

Jeannette Eason:

To the East Coast, Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

… the East Coast up to Maryland, you said?

Jeannette Eason:

Maryland, Virginia, in that area.

Robert Stone:

What were you picking up there? What kind of crops were you working?

Jeannette Eason:

From strawberries through to turnip greens. You have strawberries, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, corn, and the last big crop the farmers would grow is the turnip greens.

Robert Stone:

Then so how did you ultimately connect to get married?

Jeannette Eason:

By coming… My father gave him address in Maryland where he would be at, the post office box number, that was the only thing we had, we didn’t know where we was going in the vehicle and he gave him the post office box to keep in touch, like that, with him.

Robert Stone:

Because you were friends and you do gigs together, is that right-

Willie Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

… programs.

Jeannette Eason:

He was doing it for the Davis family period and he came across… was it in the summer of ’53? Yeah, during the summer of ’53, but when he came across Alyce had already got her divorce, Bishop Nelson got the divorce quick and he was telling my mother about the divorce and how bad he wanted his kids. He didn’t want to leave his kids behind for another man to raise and all. I heard that conversation by listening at the door and what he done there in Maryland. He came over and got our group started to the… the name of it was the Golden Harps.

Robert Stone:

Who was in that group?

Jeannette Eason:

The folks up in Maryland. My four brothers, my sisters. It was two girls and four boys.

Robert Stone:

The Golden Harps?

Willie Eason:

Golden Harps.

Jeannette Eason:

Of Pocomoke City, Maryland.

Robert Stone:

What city?

Jeannette Eason:

Pocomoke City?

Robert Stone:

Pocomoke.

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative). P-O-C-O-M-O-K-E, Maryland.

Willie Eason:

Pocomoke.

Robert Stone:

Never heard of that.

Jeannette Eason:

It’s up… Princess Anne, Maryland is the next biggest town, Snow Hill, Maryland and then you got Salisbury.

Willie Eason:

Wasn’t no big towns, very small.

Robert Stone:

Farming towns.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Small towns.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. Pocomoke is a farming town, yes.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative). The Golden Harps?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) of Pocomoke, Maryland.

Robert Stone:

And Willie hooked up with you then but that was still-

Jeannette Eason:

No, but we wasn’t… No, we weren’t-

Robert Stone:

Yeah, he-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, he hooked up with the family, he wasn’t-

Robert Stone:

Right. So it was sometime later, what’d you say, like four years later before you finally-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. We came back to Florida. Well, don’t forget he booked us all through up there in Maryland.

Willie Eason:

Don’t forget I promoted [crosstalk 00:03:28]

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. He even did promotions with Archie Lee Brown [Archie Brownlee].

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah-

Robert Stone:

Archie Brownlee, yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, the-

Robert Stone:

The Blind Boys-

Willie Eason:

Blind Boys, yes.

Jeannette Eason:

The Harmonettes in Salisbury.

Willie Eason:

Blind Boys, I used to kept them-

Jeannette Eason:

Cambridge, Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

… when they didn’t have money to stay all night or whatnot, I gave them a place to stay because a lot of times they was broke. You’d think that they was-

Jeannette Eason:

Well that was in Philadelphia after we got married, but this was… With him being in promotions because he started in Georgia with C.L. Franklin, he knew exactly where the singers would be.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

See by calling the-

Willie Eason:

You know Otis Jackson?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, by calling the promoter.

Willie Eason:

I bet you heard of him.

Robert Stone:

Who?

Willie Eason:

Otis Jackson.

Robert Stone:

What about him?

Willie Eason:

Well, he was a promoter.

Robert Stone:

Where was he?

Willie Eason:

He worked at… just like I went to work with… I forget, but he’s ahead of me. He’s the one that really had it going.

Robert Stone:

Where was he based?

Willie Eason:

Where was Otis?

Jeannette Eason:

Canal Park, Florida. Anywhere through Florida.

Willie Eason:

Well, he booked mostly in Florida.

Robert Stone:

Was he living in Jacksonville or Orlando?

Jeannette Eason:

He lived up around Jacksonville.

Willie Eason:

He wasn’t no singer or musician, but he was a promoter.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

He’d promote a few of these-

Jeannette Eason:

What he was doing, Otis was a very slick promoter, something like Ronnie Williams and what he’d done, he had heard of the Blind Boys of Alabama, right? But what Otis would do was go through Georgia and South Carolina, get a vying group, and he put on his fly card The Blind Boys from Mississippi.

Willie Eason:

But he wouldn’t tell what Blind Boys it was-

Jeannette Eason:

In Alabama and when the people get down there it’s a different group.

Willie Eason:

See, the original Blind Boys, they’d draw the crowd.

Robert Stone:

So he was a shifty guy?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Well, do you think he actually wrote the Roosevelt song and the Pearl Harbor thing?

Jeannette Eason:

No, are you kidding? That’s the lying-est man ever walked the earth.

Robert Stone:

Is that right?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh my God.

Willie Eason:

But he got by with a lot of stuff that he was doing.

Jeannette Eason:

He was the one the night Willie… To show you the jealousy this man had in him, we went out on a boat ride with Rosetta Tharpe.

Willie Eason:

Sister Rosetta Tharpe. You heard of her.

Jeannette Eason:

And the boat ride was sold out. It would take you out from the pier in Philadelphia on the boat and you go up the river.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

It was sold out. The crowd was loaded. Willie got the people down there on the boat. Here come Otis Jackson. Right there in Philadelphia… Delaware River, that’s what you’d ride on, going out and they’d take them tours out like that and got back to the boat and the man had engine trouble. And he kept telling Willie, he said, “I’m trying to start it. I’m trying to start it.” He said that it will not start.” So even Rosetta told us, said, “Well, Willie said, ‘Look, get him to rock it.’ If he started rocking it, baby you and I are going to rock it.” She’s such a beautiful person.

Willie Eason:

She was a very lively person. Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Jeannette Eason:

After the program. He didn’t even know what he said ’til after the program, Otis Jackson. He went through trying to tell everybody on that boat, “Go down then and get your money back because the boat didn’t sail.”

Willie Eason:

He’s trying to hurt, you know, that jealousy.

Robert Stone:

And it wasn’t his program, it was-

Jeannette Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

He just was there.

Willie Eason:

No.

Jeannette Eason:

And you know something else he would do? If you had tickets made up for your program, he would do a reproduction of your own tickets and sell them.

Robert Stone:

Is that right?

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And put the money in his pocket.

Robert Stone:

Where did that… that happen to you?

Willie Eason:

No, he did never do it to me.

Robert Stone:

But you heard of it?

Jeannette Eason:

But he’s done it to Ronnie Williams so many times, wasn’t nothing-

Robert Stone:

Who’s Ronnie Williams?

Jeannette Eason:

Ronnie Williams was another big crook out of New Jersey.

Willie Eason:

He was a promoter, he promoted.

Jeannette Eason:

A promoter. He’d get all the singers there, Bob. They perform and everything and look for him, he gone back to Newark.

Willie Eason:

He gone with the money.

Jeannette Eason:

The singers were stuck in Philadelphia. This is all mine!

Willie Eason:

He gone with the money.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, I know. That’s why so many of them demanded cash.

Jeannette Eason:

Right, yeah.

Willie Eason:

They’re going with the money.

Jeannette Eason:

But Willie struggled with everybody that he ever promoted. Even if his program fell through, he wouldn’t treat one no better than he’d treat the others.

Willie Eason:

That’s right because you could ask him-

Jeannette Eason:

He seen that every one of them-

Willie Eason:

… both groups of the Blind Boys-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

… The Happy Land, and what’s that other boy name, Archie?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

I treated them all-

Jeannette Eason:

Clarence.

Willie Eason:

Clarence, that’s right. I treated them all fair. All of them loved me. Not only that, I even took them into my house and fed them instead of letting them go to the restaurant.

Jeannette Eason:

Even have paid their hotel bill when they get to town. They’d come in-

Willie Eason:

They’d come in broke.

Robert Stone:

But Otis Jackson was a shifty guy, huh?

Willie Eason:

Oh yes he was.

Jeannette Eason:

He would try to take anybody’s song. Well, not only that he copied behind Willie’s songbook. Willie sang it and he come up here to steal his songbook.

Robert Stone:

Do you think he wrote that Pearl Harbor and Roosevelt?

Jeannette Eason:

No way.

Robert Stone:

No?

Jeannette Eason:

No way.

Robert Stone:

Where did it come?

Willie Eason:

Well, only thing I know…. I can’t say exactly who, but the thing about it, it was taken by at least two as far as I know that would try to use words, some of them used a few different words, but it’s the same song. It’s the same song.

Jeannette Eason:

But he always told us and the way he could repeat it whether he had the music or not.

Robert Stone:

Who?

Jeannette Eason:

Willie. That made me believe because up until the day that man can repeat that Roosevelt and it’s just like his music. Even now with Alzheimer’s, I have Edward and them to watch him. He might forget and sing a song twice, but in that song, he never mix two songs together. He might sing it twice with the Alzheimer’s, but you’ll never hear him mix two songs like Little Wooden Church with Never Hurt a Man. He might sing Never Hurt Man twice, but he don’t mix them.

Robert Stone:

Right. Let’s get back. Excuse me if I get, but I got to get out of here about 4:30-

Willie Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

… or 4:00 and want to get…

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, God.

Robert Stone:

Of course, I can always call you if I need something.

Jeannette Eason:

Right, I got to run and pick the kids up.

Robert Stone:

You got to go?

Jeannette Eason:

Dominique and JJ up.

Robert Stone:

Okay. Well, can you give me just a couple minutes we’ll talk about… Let’s get down and when y’all actually got married.

Jeannette Eason:

We got married February, the 15th, 1956.

Willie Eason:

She got it right.

Robert Stone:

2/15/56.

Jeannette Eason:

In Folkston, Georgia.

Robert Stone:

And you were on the road with your family at the time?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, we was back down here in Florida out near Lake Mirror.

Robert Stone:

Okay, so your family was in Florida? Why did you go up to Folkston?

Jeannette Eason:

Up to Folkston because my father wouldn’t let us get married, and he told Willie that about four or five times and yeah, he let us get married the minute he’d leave, he knocked me down, “What you want to marry him for?”

Robert Stone:

And you could… See, I was raised in Florida in those days, in ’56, you can get married in Georgia younger without your parents’ permission, is that right?

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Robert Stone:

That’s why… and Folkston is-

Jeannette Eason:

No, I was 19, almost 20. February… March, I would have been 20. I was 19 and that’s what my father brought up. That I couldn’t get married because I was under age.

Robert Stone:

You were under 21?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

But Georgia, the Reverend Green-

Willie Eason:

Yeah, that man changes in Georgia…

Jeannette Eason:

The funeral home told him, he said, “Reverend Davis,” he said, “I hate to… what’d he say, “I hate to disobey what you’re saying,” he said, “but in this county she’s grown. She’s 19 years old.”

Robert Stone:

This in Ocala or-

Jeannette Eason:

No, in Folkston, Georgia.

Willie Eason:

In Folkston, Georgia.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. Right.

Jeannette Eason:

Because, “She’s wrong, she’s 19 years old.”

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

“You cannot stop this wedding.”

Robert Stone:

So was he pretty upset when you come back?

Jeannette Eason:

Ooh, my father cursed all the way back home.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, but they learnt to love me, Bob. Before it was over with-

Jeannette Eason:

That’s what he learned, Bob.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. They all learned to love me because I had to take care of all of them.

Jeannette Eason:

Afterwards he learned, but…

Robert Stone:

But you were still booking the family?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Well, not only was he… At that time, no, he was just traveling back here from Chicago, and made several trips and bought food because I took sick and I had pleurisy in the sides. My tubes and things was green and that’s when he had my sister to call him the last time. That had to be in January, or the first of February wasn’t it?

Willie Eason:

Somewhere along there.

Jeannette Eason:

Because we left and went to Chicago in March to play Evans Church.

Willie Eason:

Clay Evans, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

It was the fourth or fifth Sunday in March.

Willie Eason:

It’s really outstanding.

Jeannette Eason:

He had us booked on that program-

Willie Eason:

Baptist ministers in Chicago.

Jeannette Eason:

… after we got married in February.

Robert Stone:

The Davis family?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative). And from there then that’s when the programs really-

Robert Stone:

When are you going to be back?

Jeannette Eason:

I’ll be back in about five minutes. They going to call us.

Robert Stone:

Oh no, that’s no big deal.

Jeannette Eason:

Well, it won’t be too long. I just got to fight with the traffic.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, right.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Willie, when you were up in Chicago in the ’50s, you were living up there? When you married Jean when you came down to marry Jean, you were living in Chicago?

Willie Eason:

We lived there for a while but-

Jeannette Eason:

No you was in Chicago when you came down to Mirror.

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah, when I came down-

Robert Stone:

You already had some apartments then? You were already in real estate then?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, I was already there.

Jeannette Eason:

[crosstalk 00:14:38]

Robert Stone:

How much stuff do you have? Do you remember? And where they were?

Willie Eason:

In Chicago… Now that, I wish you had told me… I could have wrote all this down.

Robert Stone:

That’s all right, do what you can.

Willie Eason:

But I could-

Robert Stone:

South Side?

Willie Eason:

South side.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

South side, that’s right. That where I met the Soul Stirrers there. Do you have it?

Robert Stone:

One or two buildings or five buildings or duplexes or do you remember?

Willie Eason:

Just had two buildings, two buildings.

Robert Stone:

Two buildings?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

How many apartments, how many units, five, 10?

Willie Eason:

Well, I only had just a couple apartment, I mostly rent the rooms, I make more money.

Robert Stone:

You rented rooms to single men or what?

Willie Eason:

Well, single men with their girlfriend. You don’t know whether they girlfriend and boyfriend. So you-

Robert Stone:

So you just rent a room, not to a single person-

Willie Eason:

That’s right. So if something happen, it’s up to them.

Robert Stone:

Right. Would they pay by the week or the month or…

Willie Eason:

Well, some of them paid by the week because most of payday was around Friday.

Robert Stone:

Right. Now when you left to go travel to Florida who took care of your apartments? Who collected rent?

Willie Eason:

My program was booked as such. You know that nobody was booked. In other words like take Harris out of the Soul- he was just great. He was a great promoter, Harris out of the Soul Stirrers.

Robert Stone:

Rebert Harris?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. And the thing is, we got to be real great friend and I was on a lot of their programs and they was on my program. That’s right, then I went into promotion and that’s why I started into promotion and now that’s when I-

Robert Stone:

But-

Willie Eason:

… you remember Amos ‘n’ Andy?

Robert Stone:

Yep.

Willie Eason:

I’m the first one that booked Amos ‘n’ Andy in Chicago.

Robert Stone:

Is that right?

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Robert Stone:

You got to know those guys?

Willie Eason:

Yes.

Robert Stone:

How was that? The Black people liked them?

Willie Eason:

Oh, yeah.

Robert Stone:

They liked Amos ‘n’ Andy.

Willie Eason:

Yes, they did.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative), but it was white guys that played the parts, right?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

They were white guys?

Willie Eason:

These here, the ones I’m talking about was Black.

Robert Stone:

I see.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, they were Black. They was Black. I was glad to meet them. That’s the first time… I had- him a lot and whatnot doing their shows and all, by the first time I had met them, you know?

Robert Stone:

When you went out of town who collected the rent for you, from your rooms?

Willie Eason:

Well, the ones who collected my rent, I think I got bit once or twice, but I had pretty good tenants. My tenant clientele was very good. They didn’t give me a whole lot of mouth, like a lot of tenants try to do…

Robert Stone:

So you could leave for a week or two and then come back and collect rent?

Willie Eason:

That’s it.

Robert Stone:

You didn’t have to leave anybody to look out for it?

Willie Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

All right. But you couldn’t go too long?

Willie Eason:

No, that’s right. You’re right.

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Right. You, telling me the story.

Robert Stone:

Well, I’m just trying to put it all together.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, and the thing is, Bob, it was just like… you know a couple times you know when I met you and when I had been meeting different ones… Well, I’d be constantly meeting different ones, because you’re out there in the field, but the thing is, I can say, out of all the groups that I’ve met, that you are functioning with, and whatnot, I have to give it to what you call them boys, them brothers, Campbell Brothers.

Robert Stone:

Yeah?

Willie Eason:

They seem to be very honest, down to Earth.

Robert Stone:

Well, you got that right.

Willie Eason:

Yes, he was like a person I used to use that phrase, “You’ll tell on yourself.” you know what I mean? You don’t intend to, but if you’ve done something bad or whatnot, and it comes to light, it comes where it can be seen and whatnot, the thing is the song that we used to sing, You Can’t Hide. That’s right. God got your number, no way you’ll live. It said, “Death got a warrant for you.” I remember that. So, you can’t hide. That’s right because eventually somebody’s going to get to know what you is, who you is and whatnot.

Willie Eason:

That’s the way it has been with me because I got some of the biggest surprises, with programs are things I went… The thing is I found out that certain things that I was doing, I had to change around a little bit like in making the guitar seem like it’s saying exactly what I’m saying and after I found out that was helping me I threw that in. Never hurt a man, I said, “Watch your mouth,” you know like that, and you just went to going with the public. I asked the guitar, “What did you say?” “Yeah, we heard.” I said, “You’re good.” And that built me up some.

Robert Stone:

So when did you leave Chicago?

Willie Eason:

I stayed in Chicago a good while. I even come back, me and my wife was separated, I’d say a couple of weeks or whatnot, but I came back over when I got my wife last I went back to Chicago because I was making a heck of… some money on them streets. On them street corners?

Robert Stone:

How much money did you make?

Willie Eason:

On them street corners?

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Oh my God. I couldn’t say. If I told you exactly I’d be lying. To tell… Yeah, because some corners you’re going to do better than you do on other corners.

Robert Stone:

Now you and Jean lived in Chicago?

Willie Eason:

We lived in Philadelphia…

Robert Stone:

But when you first got married, you live in Chicago, right? That’s when you took the cars up there?

Willie Eason:

When we first… Yeah, we lived in… No, no, no, no. We’s come back to Florida. We lived in Florida for a while.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Willie Eason:

And for not that long, for a few months and don’t forget all of my work and my house, my rentals and everything was up here in Philadelphia. The thing is, I was playing on the street corners, I done that practically and away I went, I’d just go and knock on your door and say, “Bob, I’m a gospel singer. I play steel guitar. If you want to hear me, I’ll play for you.” I’ll say, “I’d like to hook up to your current. I’ll pay you for it, whatever you… You give me a price, if it’s $2, if it’s $5, whatnot, then you let me hook up. That’s how I got started playing in the street.

Robert Stone:

And how did-

Willie Eason:

That’s how got met with the Soul Stirrers, playing on the street right on the corner there. Right around the corner I was singing, I was hooked up to the back of their… They had a… what you call it?

Robert Stone:

A dry cleaner?

Willie Eason:

A dry cleaner. That’s right.

Robert Stone:

Who owned that?

Willie Eason:

Well, I don’t know how many of them owned it, but don’t forget, it was about five or six of the Soul Stirrers, but I know at least… let me see, Medlock, Harris, those are the two main leaders and they was the head of the Soul Stirrers.

Robert Stone:

Right and they had a share of this dry cleaners?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. I assume it because those are the main two that was… Those were the ones that you-

Robert Stone:

You plugged in there. You plugged your amp to the dry cleaners?

Willie Eason:

Right, and then I remember while they were down on 47th and Prairie, Harris, who used to be the manager, after he heard me, he introduced me to another dry cleaner friend of his up on 58th and Prairie. Yeah, so that’s the way…

Robert Stone:

And you played, you hooked up there too?

Willie Eason:

Oh, yes, yes. And I’d make more money there doing that than I would if I’d go on a job somewhere because them people give. That’s right. I had one man, anytime I played Pearl Harbor, he come from up the street, that’s on 47th and Prairie, that man would come down there and said, “You know what I want.” I said, “Roosevelt.” “Yeah, you got it, you got it.” But he’d wait till I played the song, he’d come in, stick it up there in my pocket.

Robert Stone:

What’d he give you?

Willie Eason:

Huh? $5.

Robert Stone:

$5.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

This was the undertaker?

Willie Eason:

Hmm?

Robert Stone:

This was-

Willie Eason:

No, this here, he wasn’t an undertaker, he was some other politician guy, this guy was.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Jeannette Eason:

I’m back.

Robert Stone:

Hey.

Willie Eason:

I was telling him about Harris and all of them-

Robert Stone:

Hey.

Willie Eason:

… but I’ll tell them about how I got to playing on the street corners.

Jeannette Eason:

You told him about the properties?

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Robert Stone:

No, I was trying to get straight on that. Now when-

Jeannette Eason:

He owned….

Robert Stone:

When you got married, he said you said you stayed in Florida for a while, just a few months.

Jeannette Eason:

Only… what he done, we got married on the 15th of-

Robert Stone:

February.

Jeannette Eason:

Of February. He took off on the 17th and went to Chicago. He had just bought a brand new ’56 Cadillac when he drove down. When he come down he had my wedding suit, my blouse, my corsage, my pearls, my shoes, my stockings in the trunk of that car.

Robert Stone:

He brought it all and brought to you. Surprise.

Jeannette Eason:

The corsage, everything. Corsage, everything.

Willie Eason:

Right from Chicago.

Jeannette Eason:

Right from Chicago.

Robert Stone:

Did you like that?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, he paid with [inaudible 00:25:29].

Robert Stone:

On that you were tickled though.

Jeannette Eason:

That’s too…

Willie Eason:

It was exclusive store, very exclusive.

Robert Stone:

Yeah because he was a high roller then right?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, yeah. Oh, when he stepped out, he had on this. Never will forget it.

Robert Stone:

What’d he look like? Yeah, tell me. Tell me what y’all wore when you got married. Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And this is where Henry got his dressing from. Henry wasn’t a dresser by his self.

Willie Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

Is that right?

Jeannette Eason:

Him and Willie Eason and Eberhardt was the best dressed men that was. They matched everything. Now, the Cadillac was a Goddess gold and yellow.

Robert Stone:

A what color?

Jeannette Eason:

Goddess gold.

Willie Eason:

Goddess gold, that’s what the name is called.

Robert Stone:

Goddess gold.

Jeannette Eason:

And yellow. All right?

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative), and yellow, two toned.

Jeannette Eason:

Two toned.

Willie Eason:

Two toned, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Now when he got out that car he had one of these, I know you seen them, a Stetson hat, but it’s made out of cowhide. So you know how the brown is in the cowhide and then the beige is in the cowhide, that’s the kind of hat he had on. He had on shoes to match.

Robert Stone:

Gold shoes?

Willie Eason:

More like alligator shoes.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, with a little alligator going through it.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Jeannette Eason:

And he had own brown beige pants with a shirt with beige in it, but it looked more like silk and when he got out he sashed.

Robert Stone:

Did he have a tie on?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. No, he didn’t have a tie on. He was sporting, you know, free man.

Robert Stone:

The Stetson hat was like the… what do they-

Jeannette Eason:

It wasn’t no-

Robert Stone:

They call it-

Jeannette Eason:

… wide brim hats like the… what you call it, my father had one and like the guys wear now but it’s a Panama.

Willie Eason:

Was it a-

Jeannette Eason:

It wasn’t that.

Robert Stone:

It was smaller.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, it was small.

Willie Eason:

Smaller.

Robert Stone:

Smaller brim.

Willie Eason:

At the time they called them the Stetson hats. They mostly sold them in New York and-

Robert Stone:

That was a brand.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

And it was that calf skin, like calf skin-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, the calf skin.

Robert Stone:

Brown and white, it was?

Jeannette Eason:

Brown and white.

Robert Stone:

Now, did you have any custom stuff on your car at that time on that ’56 Cadillac?

Willie Eason:

Oh my God-

Jeannette Eason:

[crosstalk 00:27:36]

Willie Eason:

… you shouldn’t have said that.

Robert Stone:

Tell me.

Willie Eason:

You shouldn’t have said that.

Jeannette Eason:

Well, the ’52-

Robert Stone:

Tell me about this ’56 where he drove down to get you there.

Jeannette Eason:

The ’56, was brand new off the floor, but then he had the Vs over back bumpers of each bumper.

Robert Stone:

Oh, Cadillac V?

Jeannette Eason:

He had one sent all the way to Hollywood-

Robert Stone:

California.

Jeannette Eason:

… to get the extension of the trunk with the toweling.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

Am I missing something?

Willie Eason:

No, she got a good memory.

Robert Stone:

The visor, spotlights, what?

Willie Eason:

Oh, the visor, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

The visor was on there, and in the front, he still had the smaller Vs, right, they were on that fender over the tire. I mean, it was spotless.

Robert Stone:

How about did he have fender skirts on it? You remember those fender skirts?

Jeannette Eason:

I don’t remember the skirts.

Willie Eason:

Only on the rim.

Jeannette Eason:

On the rim, yeah.

Willie Eason:

On the rim.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, on the rim.

Willie Eason:

Two rims.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

And it was Goddess gold and yellow?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And that chrome bumper on the back with the tie-

Robert Stone:

Continental… continental clip they call that.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, he had all that done to the car.

Robert Stone:

And how about the interior? What was it like?

Jeannette Eason:

It was white leather.

Robert Stone:

White leather.

Jeannette Eason:

Yes, I’ll never forget.

Robert Stone:

I must have been some car, right?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, it was gorgeous.

Willie Eason:

You know, I [crosstalk 00:29:06]

Jeannette Eason:

But my father almost fainted when he seen it.

Robert Stone:

[crosstalk 00:29:07] today. Yeah, and then hey-

Willie Eason:

You wish you had it-

Robert Stone:

Did you pay cash for it?

Willie Eason:

No, I did not.

Jeannette Eason:

No, he was on a payment. His payment was $356 a month.

Robert Stone:

Wow. That was a lot of-

Jeannette Eason:

That’s shows you how much Willie was making.

Robert Stone:

That was a lot of money.

Jeannette Eason:

He had his apartment building.

Robert Stone:

Remember what that car cost back then?

Willie Eason:

No, I can’t… this right offhand. Don’t forget I was making payments. I finally got up that down payment.

Jeannette Eason:

What’d you have? You had like three years back then-

Willie Eason:

Or something like that.

Jeannette Eason:

… to pay for a car.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

You know they just started this four and six year crap. Pay the-

Willie Eason:

You know it just built my credit. Hey, it built my credit to own it, to be able to get it.

Jeannette Eason:

Because he owned his houses. He had-

Robert Stone:

How many units did he have at that time?

Jeannette Eason:

At 1918… Well there you can rent the basement-

Robert Stone:

1918 what?

Jeannette Eason:

West Adam Street in Chicago.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

You had apartment in the basement floor. Then you had the first floor and as you come up the steps that was a second floor. What they have, about three floors there?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, well you talking about Adams street with the-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, Adams, West Adam, 1918.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And there you had tenants throughout.

Willie Eason:

Oh, yeah. I wasn’t worried about no tenants.

Jeannette Eason:

But what he done, the reason why we didn’t get… eventually got up there, until he went back, on the 16th he left the car with me and we took him to the airport and my father… No, you got somebody else to take them to the airport.

Willie Eason:

I can’t recall.

Jeannette Eason:

I think it was Andy Jones.

Robert Stone:

You left that brand new Cadillac with her?

Jeannette Eason:

He left it parked there in the yard with me. Well, my father was so happy that he left it, he figured he’d want to play big shot.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, her father, when I see him, he left it-

Jeannette Eason:

…he would have taken it and drive it.

Robert Stone:

Sure, who wouldn’t?

Jeannette Eason:

And show people it was his car.

Robert Stone:

Who wouldn’t?

Jeannette Eason:

But then when… I guess, like I’ve always been a grown up and I respect other people materials and things. He asked me for the keys, I said, “Willie didn’t leave me no keys.” But I had went and hid the keys in the dirt under the house to make sure, in a jar, that he couldn’t find it. [Tape stops]. Now, he got angry with me.

Robert Stone:

Your father?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And he knew, him and Willie had sit down and talked, this is after we’re married, that Willie had wanted to take the family to Chicago. He said, “Dad, I’m going back, and I want to go and I got to get some tenants out in order for you and your family to live and be comfortable.” He said, “I’m doing this for the Davis family,” right? So Willie got up there and in about four or five days he got in touch with me. He wrote me because we didn’t have a phone and he said, “Jeannette,” he said, “Honey,” he said, “I want you to come up. Here’s a plane ticket. I want you to come up and see where do you want to live in this house as my wife,” right?

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Jeannette Eason:

So with my father having an understanding and all, I couldn’t take that plane ticket and leave, but see, it wasn’t on my father’s part, it was the respect I had for my father, even though I was married to him. I kept them vows and abide by obey your parents and all. So he said, his words to me was, “If you get on the plane, I will have you taken off and I will embarrass you in front of this town,” and embarrassment was something I lived with. I didn’t want this. So I wrote him back. He took the money on it. Now, it was in my name, the ticket. My father was so well known, he went down to the post office to Mrs. Payne in Longwood, Florida and cashed that money and kept it.

Robert Stone:

So it was a money order for a ticket?

Jeannette Eason:

It was a money order for a ticket and he told me, he had my flight made and everything, and he had told me what to do and all. So when he did that, he took my oldest sister, they went down and done it and he told me, he said, “If you think for one minute. I’m going to let… and he told him this before we got married, “That I’m going to let you take my support away from me, you got another thought coming. You’re crazy.” And that’s what he told me. He said, “I don’t care how much money he spend.”

Jeannette Eason:

So I wrote Willie back through Amos Jones, a neighbor. I could not write Willie Eason and mail a letter. I had to write Amos Jones. Amos Jones would take my letter, he’d come up to the house, pick it up, take my letter and send it to Willie. Willie would send a letter back to Amos Jones and Amos would come down the road, if it was no mail, you didn’t hear nothing, if it was mail, Amos would whistle.

Jeannette Eason:

So I’m the one that’s always cleaning the yard and everything and he would whistle, but before he got in the… it was like a little picket gate like fence, he would drop the mail on outside of the fence and nothing to see, there wasn’t no scenic roads or nothing. So with me being outside all time cutting the wood and cleaning and all, I’d go out and I’d see that tree. I got the rake under that tree now, and when I go down, I get a letter and I fold it up, put it in my pants. I always wore pants and he would go and sit on the porch and talk to my parents and entertain them while I go back in the woods and read my letter. So finally, Willie came down. We had a ’51 Pontiac Buick that I had bought my father by working in the field.

Robert Stone:

Pontiac Buick?

Jeannette Eason:

Pontiac, ’51 Pontiac and we had a 1941… what was that? Dodge that Tony gave us from Maryland? That was Buick. No, that was a Buick. A ’41 Buick sitting in our yard. Mind you, his Cadillac was sitting there too. This man, the night we laid down to take a nap, he started crying and I said, “What’s wrong?” He said, “In order to get you and your family, 15 people to Chicago,” he said, “Jean,” he said, “I don’t know how you’re going to take this. If you want to quit me now, go ahead and quit me,” he said, “but I got to give the car up.”

Jeannette Eason:

I told him that night I said, “What do you mean give the car up?” He said, “Because financially, I can’t do it. I can’t make those payments and take care of your family.” He gave that car back to the finance company and he picks the ’51 Pontiac and the ’41 Buick up and that’s what he took 16 here the people to Chicago.

Robert Stone:

One of them a station wagon?

Jeannette Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

No, just-

Jeannette Eason:

It’s two cars.

Robert Stone:

Just big cars?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

And that’s another thing. You had a reputation of being a guy who could fix cars.

Willie Eason:

Well, I wasn’t no mechanic, but I tried to keep them going.

Robert Stone:

They run.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

Yeah, keep them going.

Robert Stone:

Because that was actually part of your trade. I mean with traveling and-

Jeannette Eason:

Oh yeah.

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah, yes.

Jeannette Eason:

And walking down a road with a flat tire rolling it try to get to a service station with no spare.

Robert Stone:

So he moved the 15 of you up. When was that?

Jeannette Eason:

That was in March.

Robert Stone:

Of?

Jeannette Eason:

I can’t recall-

Robert Stone:

Of ’56, that same year?

Jeannette Eason:

Of ’56. Yeah, it was ’56, because on the fourth Sunday in March, we was at Clay Evans Church-

Willie Eason:

Clay Evans.

Jeannette Eason:

… with the Davis Sisters, Maceo Woods.

Willie Eason:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

… and our group was there because-

Robert Stone:

What church was that?

Jeannette Eason:

That was Clay Evans.

Willie Eason:

Clay Evans, who was a very known well known minister.

Jeannette Eason:

You know what street that was on?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, State Street.

Jeannette Eason:

State Street.

Robert Stone:

Great.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Davis and Maceo Woods.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), and the Davis Sisters out of Philadelphia.

Robert Stone:

Oh and the Davis Family?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah and the Davis Family.

Robert Stone:

Okay. Wow, that’s-

Jeannette Eason:

But then the reason he changed it to the Davis Family was because Harris wife of the Soul Stirrers heard about the Golden Harps of Pocomoke City, Maryland. She was the Golden Harps of Chicago, remember, Jeanette.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, there was one-

Jeannette Eason:

Her name was Jeanette too, and she start complaining that Willie had give us her name.

Robert Stone:

And Willie had nothing to do with it.

Jeannette Eason:

Had nothing to do with it. I mean, you’re thousands of miles away, you understand? And we went and we sung and that’s when Willie changed it and said, “No, we’re going back to the original Davis Family.”

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

And that way, Harris, nobody couldn’t say nothing because no-

Willie Eason:

They wasn’t nothing but kids [crosstalk 00:39:31]

Jeannette Eason:

… because it was mostly jealousy.

Willie Eason:

People went wild.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, because we went to Clay Evans and it was so funny. Now the Davis Sisters had heard us in Philadelphia, remember? In the Met.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

And now they’re out in Chicago, but when they heard us at the Met… now that had to be in ’53… Wait a minute, come on, let me help you. That had be in ’53 when you took us to Philly to sing at the Met.

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

Because we hadn’t gone to Chicago.

Willie Eason:

That was a big theater.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, I’ve seen it.

Jeannette Eason:

On Broad and Poplar.

Robert Stone:

I’ve seen it.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Broad and Poplar.

Jeannette Eason:

He took us up there to get us introduced, right, but when he got there, they didn’t want us to sing. So he finally got… It was Ronnie Williams. He got Ronnie Williams, and he told him, he brought him all the way from Maryland up there and, “Just give him a chance.” He said, “I promise you once you hear him you won’t regret letting them over the program.” Them boys got over that program Bob, Baby Sis come walking out to the mic.

Willie Eason:

That’s one of the Davis Sisters.

Robert Stone:

Right, I know.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, the big one.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

“How did y’all enjoy that?” “Huh?” “These are my cousins.”

Willie Eason:

I don’t believe I-

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, the Ward singers was on that program, Clara Ward.

Robert Stone:

This is back at the Met now?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, back at the Met in Philly. Clara Ward was there. She put on my shoes to go out on stage with her because her feet was hurting so bad. Right there the Met at Broad and Poplar.

Robert Stone:

That’s great. Let’s get back to Chicago.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

So he takes a 15 of you up here. What is-

Jeannette Eason:

It was 16.

Robert Stone:

16. So you had to throw out, you had to evict some of your tenants?

Jeannette Eason:

Right, uh-huh (affirmative). For the apartments, because my brother and his wife, Charles and they baby. Then we had the nine sisters and brothers at home, so that’s 12 right there.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

I took all of them in and slept them all.

Jeannette Eason:

My sister had a baby and my mother and father.

Robert Stone:

Your sister who had a baby?

Jeannette Eason:

Susan. Then my mother and father and myself.

Robert Stone:

Wow. And so did y’all stay in the one building that 18 West Adams?

Jeannette Eason:

Right, well they was-

Robert Stone:

Was it three story?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

And my mother and them was all up on the second floor bedroom. My brother Charles had his own room, but see the apartment was big, like six or seven rooms.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, you get two apartment on one floor.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Now was this like a row house or big freestanding house or apartment or what?

Jeannette Eason:

No, big three floor… yeah, it was a row house. Yeah.

Robert Stone:

I’m wondering that. Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Row houses that run together, yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

It was a big row house.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, and after we got there, he also had, 1806 West Adams.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. I bought that down in that neighborhood too.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, in the other block. So he had two houses then. After we got married, he bought another one, 1403 West Adams Street, going on the other side of the Damen and that’s the one that was all froze up.

Willie Eason:

Damen, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

That’s where he taught me how to do plumbing.

Robert Stone:

The pipes burst one winter?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, it was frozen and all.

Willie Eason:

Want to hear what she got?

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

I taught her how to do plumbing. I didn’t have to mess around with too many plumbers, I could do all my plumbing work.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, couldn’t make any money if you hired all that out.

Willie Eason:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

We stayed there until ’59.

Robert Stone:

In Chicago?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

And then where’d you go?

Jeannette Eason:

We came over to Philadelphia because Peggy, she was born in Chicago.

Willie Eason:

Did we go to Philadelphia or New Jersey first?

Robert Stone:

What address do you remember?

Jeannette Eason:

No. We came to Philadelphia-

Willie Eason:

Philadelphia.

Jeannette Eason:

… 1938 North 60.

Willie Eason:

1938 North 60, that’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

His brother, Henry lived right around the street on Morris, 608… No…

Willie Eason:

Henry lived-

Jeannette Eason:

At 608 West Morris.

Willie Eason:

See, I had a brother named Henry too.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

And he played a steel guitar.

Robert Stone:

Before I lose track of it. I liked when you were talking about… So did I understand you to say that Willie was like the original sharp dresser and then-

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) and Henry Nelson-

Robert Stone:

And Eberhardt?

Jeannette Eason:

… and Eberhardt.

Robert Stone:

They kind of imitated him?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh yeah.

Robert Stone:

So you were the guy that had everything, that you like your clothes matched.

Willie Eason:

Well, don’t forget what I… Actually I told the Campbell Brothers, I glorified in them because the truth that… you know a lot of times you go to some of them places, “Oh, he got that from me. I had one…” you know what I’m talking about, but whatnot, but a lot of times-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, but even Henry, even before we got married, Henry and I, wrote each other for, what, about close to two years and he had left Ocala and went to Leesburg. He was living down with some lady there had done fell for him, had owned a hotel or something and Henry was a trip. Me and Henry had so much fun because he was a nice looking man and boy did he try to dress. I mean, he was a good dresser and the women just flocked to him. The Campbell Brothers… I mean, they ain’t telling no tale when they say how do women flock to Henry. Mm-mm (negative) and during that period where they say Henry left the church and they couldn’t find Henry, Henry was up there in Brooklyn with us. Am I lying?

Willie Eason:

That’s right. That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

He was up there. That’s when he married Johnnie.

Willie Eason:

When we-

Robert Stone:

And did he drop out of the church?

Jeannette Eason:

No, he didn’t drop out the church. Johnnie father was a minister.

Robert Stone:

In another church?

Jeannette Eason:

In another church.

Robert Stone:

What kind of church?

Jeannette Eason:

Holiness Church.

Willie Eason:

Holiness Church.

Jeannette Eason:

Yep.

Robert Stone:

But I mean, he dropped out of the House of God or what, he didn’t participate that much?

Jeannette Eason:

He didn’t participate that much. Henry started back-

Robert Stone:

Quit going to the General Assembly.

Jeannette Eason:

Right. He started back, we was at 862 Shudder Avenue and this had to be in the ’70’s because I listened at what they said was about, what, about close to 12 or 13 years they didn’t know where Henry was, when he went to California and he come in there with the don-don-don-don-don, playing that music and singing, and he had changed up some with his lyrics, Henry Nelson.

Robert Stone:

He went to California?

Jeannette Eason:

He went to Bishop Jenkins for the General Assembly.

Willie Eason:

General Assembly.

Jeannette Eason:

He come to Nashville for the General Assembly.

Willie Eason:

General Assembly.

Jeannette Eason:

And you know who help him come? That man sitting right there.

Robert Stone:

You helped him get in?

Jeannette Eason:

Johnnie Mae had to come, she drove into us and she was really mad with me. She said, “Henry just left and ain’t no food in the house for feeding the kids,” and he was determined to go and all. So it was between him and Henry and I always have been the type, I’m not going to interfere and call [inaudible 00:47:28] on the man.

Robert Stone:

Right, that’s smart.

Jeannette Eason:

I never mentioned how Henry got out to California, you understand? But between him and say the man in white, he should have made provisions for his family before he jumped, but knowing the church hate- the church didn’t care what his family was doing back home, you understand, and Johnnie Mae would come over and what would we do? Give hers chickens, food-

Willie Eason:

We would fix dinner for them.

Jeannette Eason:

… bread and everything.

Robert Stone:

You were living in-

Jeannette Eason:

In Brooklyn.

Robert Stone:

In Brooklyn.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And let her take it back home like that, but in ’68, we bought a house in New Jersey because my kids was getting up in size and in Brooklyn, we moved, what, three or four times? We was doing like the gym, we was running trying to get a decent neighborhood to live in. I told him, I said, “No,” I said, “let’s go to Jersey and look out there,” because we had heard so much and we found this a 10 room house with an unfinished basement and an office for $28,000.

Robert Stone:

And that was in Teaneck?

Jeannette Eason:

In Teaneck, New Jersey and we moved out there, but we still, most of the time, we would only go home on the weekends because when we first started out with our business, we worked seven days a week.

Robert Stone:

What business?

Jeannette Eason:

A barbecue place.

Robert Stone:

In New York?

Jeannette Eason:

In New York.

Robert Stone:

How many? One or-

Jeannette Eason:

No, it was one at that particular time, Fat Willie from Philly.

Robert Stone:

And where was that?

Jeannette Eason:

On 19th… No, 19th… 862 Sutter Avenue.

Robert Stone:

862-

Willie Eason:

You mean the barbecue place?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, 862 Sutter Avenue, that was the first one we started.

Robert Stone:

And it was Fat Willie from Philly?

Jeannette Eason:

Fat Willie from Philly.

Robert Stone:

And when was that?

Jeannette Eason:

We opened it up in ’68… No, ’66. Jolene was born. Michael was born in ’68. It was ’66.

Robert Stone:

And you had more than one at a time?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh yeah. We had the three going at one time. 868 New Lots.

Robert Stone:

What’s…

Jeannette Eason:

New Lots.

Willie Eason:

New-

Robert Stone:

New Lots?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

868 New Lots?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

Lots, yeah… Avenue.

Jeannette Eason:

Avenue.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Jeannette Eason:

And 2186 Atlantic Avenue.

Robert Stone:

And these are in what part of New York?

Willie Eason:

Brooklyn.

Jeannette Eason:

What they call East New York at the time.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

You know, they changed the boroughs up so much.

Robert Stone:

And where they all called Fat Willie from Philly?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Great. Now you weren’t playing music on the corners at that time were you or were you?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

You still did some of that?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, on the side because it’s good clean money-

Jeannette Eason:

Not only that, he was traveling from there going into Manhattan around 125th Lenox and…

Willie Eason:

Don’t forget you got five boroughs.

Robert Stone:

Up in Harlem?

Jeannette Eason:

Yes.

Willie Eason:

You got five-

Jeannette Eason:

7th and Lenox-

Willie Eason:

… five boroughs to work in.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, out in Jamaica. And that’s where we ran across Henry at? You remember?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Henry was sitting on the porch in Jamaica-

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

… on his mother-in-law’s porch.

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Jeannette Eason:

And Willie was like down on that corner on-

Willie Eason:

On the next street over.

Jeannette Eason:

It’s a main street, I can’t think of the name of it, but he was on that corner and had hooked up his music and was singing, and he was giving a prayer.

Robert Stone:

Is this when you were on the truck?

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-uh (negative), this on the street, right?

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

He was singing there and Henry heard the music and Henry said, “That’s got to be Willie Eason.” And that’s how we found each other right there in… Well, Jamaica, Queens, New York. You know that’s-

Robert Stone:

He didn’t even know he was there, huh?

Jeannette Eason:

Didn’t even know he was there, uh-uh (negative). That’s when we got introduced, we first met Henry, the oldest boy, they come down here and another boy and the girl was the only ones they had.

Robert Stone:

They had three kids?

Jeannette Eason:

They had three kids after that.

Robert Stone:

And that’s when you met her father too at the time?

Jeannette Eason:

Her father, her mother and all.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative) because they lived close by to…

Jeannette Eason:

Not close by us.

Robert Stone:

But close by-

Jeannette Eason:

Henry was visiting them on they steps.

Robert Stone:

Oh, so he was sitting at their house.

Jeannette Eason:

Uh-huh (affirmative), he was sitting at their house.

Robert Stone:

Where was that, you remember?

Jeannette Eason:

It’s Jamaica Avenue in Queens and I don’t know the other street that is…

Robert Stone:

That’s Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

I bet if I went through there I could find it. Never forget them corners in there, but he’d sung all through there. Roosevelt went with him many times up until he died.

Robert Stone:

Roosevelt Eberhardt?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

So he would work with you on the corners?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, yeah.

Willie Eason:

Oh, yeah.

Robert Stone:

I didn’t know that. So you guys were pretty close, huh?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

Roosevelt, he act, a lot of time, like a bodyguard.

Robert Stone:

Was he a bigger guy or no?

Jeannette Eason:

He’s tall.

Willie Eason:

Tall.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. He’s six feet. He was about six feet.

Willie Eason:

The last time I think we seen him, me and you went to the hospital together?

Robert Stone:

How tall are you Willie or how tall…

Willie Eason:

I’m 5’6″.

Jeannette Eason:

He’s probably 5’6″.

Robert Stone:

5’6″, yeah were always short. So at six feet, he was a pretty-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, he was tall.

Robert Stone:

See back then there wasn’t that many six footers.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-mm (negative).

Robert Stone:

I remember my mom used to say, “Oh yeah, he’s six feet.” Now six feet is nothing, you know, really.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

It’s, “Oh, yeah. He’s a good looking guy, six feet.” Now if you’re not six feet you’re short.

Willie Eason:

You know, I could give Eberhardt-

Jeannette Eason:

Don’t you want some melon or something? I’ll be glad to get it.

Robert Stone:

I got it. Early dinner, we’re eating at 5:00. I never eat that early.

Jeannette Eason:

Well you can-

Robert Stone:

Over in Dade City,

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, you can eat-

Robert Stone:

This is like… Oh yeah, I appreciate it.

Jeannette Eason:

But Johnny don’t know up until the day had happened.

Robert Stone:

What?

Jeannette Eason:

The way Henry got to his conventions. So that’s like with the Campbells they talk all-

Robert Stone:

In Nashville you mean?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, Nashville and he went out to-

Robert Stone:

You’re talking-

Jeannette Eason:

… Bishop Jenkins in California.

Robert Stone:

How did he get out there, flew?

Jeannette Eason:

He flew out, mm-hmm (affirmative). And back then I know, was it $600 round trip? I think that’s what he told us.

Willie Eason:

I’ve got nobody-

Jeannette Eason:

… to go from there to California, $600 round trip.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, that old-

Jeannette Eason:

Because plane fares wasn’t that high then.

Robert Stone:

Them old DC3s. They took forever. Man, that took about six hours to go from New York to Miami.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Must have took a couple days to go to California.

Jeannette Eason:

Go to California. Yeah.

Robert Stone:

See my dad, when we moved to Florida in ’52 my dad had worked for Pan-Am. I was born in New Rochelle, New York. So we would go back and forth once or twice a year. It took forever on those old DC3s.

Willie Eason:

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr [engine sound].

Jeannette Eason:

We used to stand in the fields and listen them boy. That sound like it was coming down. Mm-mm (negative).

Willie Eason:

Yep, but-

Robert Stone:

It was-

Willie Eason:

You know I have to… Me, I glory and when I was here with the Campbell brothers, then I was out, they gave me-

Jeannette Eason:

Excuse me, Bill, I don’t mean to cut you off, but when I think about something, I like to make sure Bob- You remember the man that’s on that tape that heard Willie do the Roosevelt song and all? And he said, “Yeah, well Willie hooked that guitar up and do that Roosevelt song how many people-

Robert Stone:

Jones, that was J.T. Jones.

Jeannette Eason:

He’s out of where?

Robert Stone:

He’s in New York, Rochester now, but he was from Ocala because when he was talking about that he was talking about Willie in Ocala.

Jeannette Eason:

Isn’t that something? I know I had seen that man face before, but I couldn’t remember where.

Robert Stone:

Because I met him at Mary Linzy’s house, when Henry came down to visit for Christmas he was over there.

Jeannette Eason:

Isn’t that something.

Robert Stone:

Or Thanksgiving. That reminds me of something. Because let’s talk about Ocala. Between the two of you… First of all, what’s this Buddy B’s he played over by Buddy B’s, it was a joint, a juke joint or something?

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Robert Stone:

But he didn’t play inside, of course he played-

Jeannette Eason:

No, outside under the tree.

Robert Stone:

Do you remember where it was?

Jeannette Eason:

On Broadway.

Willie Eason:

On Broadway. Right on Broadway.

Jeannette Eason:

Downtown Ocala.

Willie Eason:

Downtown Ocala.

Jeannette Eason:

It was more like in the Black section of Ocala. Broadway then was Black. Dr. Hampton and the up-to-date people is the one that had the shops along there and all.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

Henry and the Campbell brothers, I have to give it to them. That’s what they told us, this two block area. I didn’t want to believe it myself because a lot of them they fib a lot and they want to be known and whatnot and-

Jeannette Eason:

But who told you about Buddy B’s, Linzy, Mary?

Robert Stone:

Yeah. I think either her or Henry. So that was a popular juke joint like?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Would you stand out right in front or across the street or under a tree?

Jeannette Eason:

Not only that-

Willie Eason:

No, they have a big lot which extended all the way in the front, and the-

Jeannette Eason:

Trees and all.

Willie Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

And when would you go out there?

Willie Eason:

Mostly on Saturdays.

Robert Stone:

Pay day?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, but you know who I give credit to-

Jeannette Eason:

Friday evening keep your mind on Ocala because they did that by the Campbell brothers. Ocala, Buddy B’s you would sing there on Fridays and Saturdays, right?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Friday evenings.

Jeannette Eason:

[crosstalk 00:58:09]

Robert Stone:

Anywhere else? You must have had more than one spot?

Jeannette Eason:

Leesburg. Would you say down in Leesburg?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, I would sing in Leesburg. Yeah, Leesburg, on of my callings.

Jeannette Eason:

I know you sung… Well, I know you used to sing in Orange City going up towards Daytona.

Robert Stone:

How about Apopka? Did you go up there?

Willie Eason:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Robert Stone:

Now I have about the stuff of Ella Mae traveling with him? She did some of that, she said, while you were married to Alyce and some while you two were married.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Well, yeah.

Robert Stone:

And that was so you could stay home with the family, is that right?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, yeah. Yeah, because I mostly stayed home, took care of business and if it wasn’t Ella Mae it was Earline.

Robert Stone:

Anybody else?

Jeannette Eason:

He’s had other ministers to go with him if they was doing street work or something like that.

Robert Stone:

So they might preach when you played?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, and call prayer in the corner.

Willie Eason:

Most of them had prayer.

Robert Stone:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Anybody you remember? Any ministers?

Jeannette Eason:

What was just the Hyde name? I can’t remember.

Willie Eason:

Hyde was her last name.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. And… Ooh, the one in New York. Oh, Lordy, let me think of her name. She wanted to beat you playing the guitar. She used to get on that floor-

Willie Eason:

Oh, Barbara. Wait a minute. Say this again? What her name now? Elder Barber.

Jeannette Eason:

Elder Barber.

Robert Stone:

Elder BB.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

BB Barber?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, tell me about her. I haven’t met her. I think she’s still alive. Elder-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, she’s a little comical and she loved to be around when we’s playing and singing.

Jeannette Eason:

She knew a few notes, but what she would do, she would get with Willie and she’d look at him and, “Show me this,” and “Show me that,” but then she got a little jealousy in her, like Henry and if he was singing on, what was it, 7th Avenue and Lenox?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

She’d be on the next corner trying to pull his crowd and she’d get mad because she couldn’t pull that crowd away from Willie. It was so comical.

Willie Eason:

I had… in there where the Soul Stirrers… what’s the name of that place now? Where the Soul Stirrers lived at?

Jeannette Eason:

Chicago?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. In Chicago, I was thinking about when they… a lot of people, when I’d be talking, instead of… they want to see what it is, I can understand. They get carried away when they see the people coming up, throwing the money like that. I could tell you so many incidents right there on St. Lawrence and 47th in Chicago, some police came up and I was playing and I was singing, and I don’t know who done it, but they’d get jealous, and they’d call, like send in a complaint or whatnot.

Willie Eason:

One time I even went to the precinct, they took me to the precinct and I told him, the guy there who was in charge whatnot, and some guy, somebody had some kind of pull. I don’t know what kind of pull they had, but they had called another-

Jeannette Eason:

Captain of the precinct.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, they call a guy in that had a pull with the city. [Tape stops]. The thing is, they came back. When they call the police, these police come in and I’ve had at least two of them, they were stunned. I said, “What did you say?” I said, “Never heard of him.” I said, “You better hush your mouth,” and the police, they’re laughing. They said, “Did you hear that?”

Jeannette Eason:

Well, tell him about… Oh, God, this little town right down here in Florida, the police wanted to stop you from playing. You singing the Roosevelt song. I forget… Now we was with you that time, me and Susie, and Edward and Charles and all of us.

Willie Eason:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

I’m trying to think of what that town that was.

Robert Stone:

It’s all right. Just tell the story and maybe you’ll think of the town.

Jeannette Eason:

No, a hop, skip and jump town.

Willie Eason:

It wasn’t Dorothy.

Jeannette Eason:

No, we went there and you had hooked up to sing and you had grew this crowd and the people was enjoying it and these two policemens came up. The first ones came up, they wanted to make you stop, but the second car came up on the other end, which was closer to him and they listened because they couldn’t get through the crowd. They listened. The first crowd had approached him. The first ones had approached him and told him he couldn’t be singing out there and he didn’t have no permit. You know it was the police [inaudible 01:03:29]. The ones that come from this side, Bob, told us that, “Uh-uh (negative). Hey, you don’t see no fighting and shooting around here,” he said, “You let this man play,” he said, “I’m enjoying the song myself.”

Robert Stone:

This was a what, in the ’50s?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, it had to be in the late ’50s.

Willie Eason:

Late ’50s.

Robert Stone:

Late ’50s?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

You don’t remember the town, huh, somewhere in Florida? North or South?

Jeannette Eason:

It was somewhere going up because… Well, we travel like from Leesburg going on up the road to different little towns… Weirsdale?

Robert Stone:

And I’m assuming these were white cops?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, of course. There wasn’t no Black cops in those days in Florida.

Jeannette Eason:

I’m thinking It may have been Weirsdale.

Robert Stone:

Weirsdale?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Could have been.

Jeannette Eason:

Yep, that’s where it was because the orange groves and the pickers. Mm-hmm (affirmative), in Weirsdale, but it’s so much when you start thinking.

Robert Stone:

So that, I take it the second cops won out the ones that said, “Let him play?”

Jeannette Eason:

Oh yeah. They tell them, they said, “There’s no fighting. We wasn’t called out here because the crowd is making a big ruckus, it ain’t no shooting, ain’t no fighting.”

Robert Stone:

Did you ever have cops that wanted you to give them a cut?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, Lord, yeah, in Chicago.

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Yeah?

Willie Eason:

“Hey buddy.” Some of them come lean over you. I’d be playing and like I’ll turn it down and begin to play on that, “Hey there. Got a…” I don’t know what they use different phrases-

Robert Stone:

Yeah, speak up so we can get it.

Jeannette Eason:

Sawbuck. A sawbuck.

Willie Eason:

And they-

Jeannette Eason:

They’d be like “Hey, yo man, I see you got many sawbucks in there. Can’t you give me one?”

Robert Stone:

That’s a $10.

Jeannette Eason:

He didn’t give-

Willie Eason:

I ran into a-

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, yeah. They would do that even if they pull you over for a ticket and go around, they’d walk around the car. When they go to walk around the second time-

Willie Eason:

But they they let-

Jeannette Eason:

… like they inspecting your car-

Willie Eason:

But they’ll look at you and they’ll let you know-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, [crosstalk 01:05:38]

Willie Eason:

… see what gleams in your face and your eyes and then they-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, “Man, I’m hungry.” And you begging they don’t write a ticket.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

“Man,” they’d say, “I’m hungry.” “You want his ticket? or you want to give me what you’re going to pay on the ticket?”

Willie Eason:

And fill it right there from eye to right around the corner.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, I mean it’s crazy, crazy.

Robert Stone:

You must have carried a lot of cash on you, huh?

Willie Eason:

No, but what it is-

Jeannette Eason:

They see him singing and tailgate him-

Willie Eason:

And they see that all them quarters and everything, it look like a whole lot of money.

Jeannette Eason:

People would throw dollar bills in there-

Willie Eason:

Then they’d throw dollar bills.

Jeannette Eason:

… and like this Jones said it, if the guy liked Roosevelt, he’d give him $5.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, he’d come in-

Jeannette Eason:

… Every time you turn around and sing that song, they throw $5 out-

Willie Eason:

47th and Prairie. A guy come from nothing, take a pile and he, what he done, “You know what I want?” He’d put that $5 in, “You know what I want.”

Robert Stone:

You ever get $20s?

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Robert Stone:

You ever get $10s or $20s?

Jeannette Eason:

He got $10s.

Willie Eason:

I have got-

Jeannette Eason:

Up in New York.

Willie Eason:

You don’t do it too many times but sometimes they may come and they’re done.

Jeannette Eason:

Some people, you had some men that was very dedicated to their mother and if you played, “If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again”-

Willie Eason:

That’s the song they-

Jeannette Eason:

… that was they song. You’d have grown men standing in the audience crying. “Look, I want you to play that. That’s for my mother.”

Willie Eason:

Well Mother’s Day, that’s the greatest song.

Jeannette Eason:

Well, don’t let it be around Mother’s Day.

Robert Stone:

That reminds me. Didn’t you have a thing in Chicago where you do flowers for Mother’s Day?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

Tell us about-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

You did the thing with flowers?

Jeannette Eason:

Flowers.

Willie Eason:

Give me my flowers.

Jeannette Eason:

No.

Robert Stone:

No, no, no, but you made-

Jeannette Eason:

We sold flowers-

Robert Stone:

You sold flowers.

Jeannette Eason:

… in Chicago.

Robert Stone:

Tell me about that.

Jeannette Eason:

That’s what he was doing, when we met him. Willie was making corsages.

Willie Eason:

Oh, I make corsage.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

He had originated out from his parents. Then I learned it from my Godmother in Maryland because she did all that for the white people there in Maryland when their [crosstalk 01:07:45]

Robert Stone:

Now are these real corsages or paper?

Jeannette Eason:

It’s made out-

Willie Eason:

Wood fiber.

Jeannette Eason:

… what they call wood fiber.

Willie Eason:

Wood fiber.

Robert Stone:

Wood fiber.

Jeannette Eason:

Wood fiber.

Robert Stone:

What’s that?

Jeannette Eason:

It’s a material that… some kind of way it comes from the wood.

Willie Eason:

I’m sorry. Now, I was thinking that is a wood fiber-

Jeannette Eason:

Oh he’s thinking… Oh Lord, have mercy. You’re thinking that [crosstalk 01:08:08]

Willie Eason:

Looking at, that’s like wood fiber and-

Jeannette Eason:

But that was-

Willie Eason:

… the material.

Jeannette Eason:

It looks similar to the watermelon, but it was very soft.

Robert Stone:

It was red?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, right, well red and-

Jeannette Eason:

Well, it had red, yellow, blue pink, white.

Willie Eason:

Double covered orange. Orange-

Robert Stone:

Was it like paper?

Jeannette Eason:

No-

Willie Eason:

No.

Jeannette Eason:

… it was more like a felt, but it was very-

Willie Eason:

Feel it, just feel that.

Robert Stone:

Something like a paper towel?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, and it was just that thin, but then you got it in blocks-

Willie Eason:

You get it in blocks.

Jeannette Eason:

… that was already cut and what they call the gross.

Willie Eason:

It’s a quarter of an inch thick.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah and a lot is a quarter of an inch.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. So in other words, some of it is three eighths and some is…

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

And then how would you shape it into flowers?

Jeannette Eason:

Well, you had your pattern.

Willie Eason:

You have a pattern.

Jeannette Eason:

You take it and you cut it and out the square, you didn’t cut that, you only cut the small ones for the small roses.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, and don’t forget we had a little piece of-

Jeannette Eason:

The square, you fold it and you put like the bud in the center and then you take wire and you’d make that… Keep the pedals going around the wire, when you got through, you just twist it at the bottom and you hold it like that and it’s a rose.

Willie Eason:

It’s a rose. I mean a rose, rose looking just like that, if not better.

Jeannette Eason:

They’re selling them in the… Yeah, they come out just like this.

Willie Eason:

That’s how come out, but you open it up-

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, but it’s much softer-

Willie Eason:

… you can open that up into a whole rose. You can just open one of them up.

Jeannette Eason:

You can just take your finger and go down the center like that over your bud and open the whole rose up and then we put fern-

Willie Eason:

Fern, right.

Jeannette Eason:

… leaves, fern and then the ribbon.

Robert Stone:

Well, how would you sell them, on the street corner?

Willie Eason:

On the street corner.

Jeannette Eason:

On the street corners.

Robert Stone:

What’d you sell them for, you remember?

Jeannette Eason:

The single rose was 25¢, the carnations, right? If they want two roses, it was 50¢, if we put two roses on the corsage with the ribbon it was a $1.50. Then if somebody wanted to special made-

Willie Eason:

Yeah, they got buds, you put buds-

Jeannette Eason:

… “That’s my mother. I want…”

Willie Eason:

Yeah, I put-

Jeannette Eason:

… six buds and three-

Willie Eason:

If you put buds on them-

Jeannette Eason:

… three buds, three roses.

Willie Eason:

We specialize in that. Now you-

Jeannette Eason:

And that was what we like, $7. We never went over $10, but if somebody wanted it special made then that not run them about $7, like that.

Robert Stone:

And who was doing this, you and him-

Jeannette Eason:

Him and I.

Robert Stone:

… or have the kids working on them at all?

Jeannette Eason:

No-

Robert Stone:

Just the two of ya’ll.

Jeannette Eason:

We didn’t have nobody, just him and I.

Robert Stone:

Just on Mother’s Day?

Jeannette Eason:

It was just for Mother’s Day. What, we traveled to Chicago [crosstalk 01:10:54]

Willie Eason:

We have traveled all the way to Chicago because when we sell them for Mother’s Day and Easter-

Jeannette Eason:

Four or five years, we did that.

Robert Stone:

Easter too, you did it?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, well mostly for Mothers Day.

Robert Stone:

Where were you based when you were doing this, where were you living?

Jeannette Eason:

In Philadelphia.

Robert Stone:

And you go out as far as Chicago?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

You go in-between too?

Jeannette Eason:

Drive over 13 hours. Everybody tried to beat out timing and couldn’t do it.

Robert Stone:

So it must have been worth your while to go over there.

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, yeah.

Robert Stone:

How many of these things would you sell?

Willie Eason:

You know I sure… you know what? It was somewhere we-

Jeannette Eason:

I tell you what. On his corner alone, he could make over $1,500. So what we did, we used my brother and what was that, Edward Charles.

Willie Eason:

Edward, Charles.

Jeannette Eason:

And then Herman would be with Charles. Paul would be with Edward on a corner. We’d put them on certain corners that was like downtown.

Robert Stone:

Were they living in Chicago?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Yeah. So you came from Philly?

Jeannette Eason:

Right.

Robert Stone:

And you put them to work for you?

Jeannette Eason:

Because my father started making them after Willie had taught my mother how to make them. So he going to cut Willie’s throat and he going to go out… Oh, Lord, Jesus. He tried to make them.

Willie Eason:

But look, I love him though.

Jeannette Eason:

We even made him-

Willie Eason:

They called me Bill.

Jeannette Eason:

When we stopped making them, the gypsies, they found out that the corners we were going were real good corners, so they come up with these little plastic carnation flowers.

Robert Stone:

The gypsies did?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, sell them for 25¢ a piece. So I told him, I said, “It’s not worth it. You got to start… We started in January and would make flowers all the way up until May.

Robert Stone:

Wow. And when was this?

Jeannette Eason:

In… God, we started… when we got to Chicago we started.

Willie Eason:

Right. Yep.

Jeannette Eason:

Because I got pregnant with Peggy on my wedding night and I had to stay in bed for six months due to the fact I was anemic and right away he put me on a specialist, but I still sit there in bed and made flowers. You remember that?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

So that was back in ’56?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

And then you stayed in Chicago to ’59?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

But you said you kept doing this when you were in Philly?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, we come to Philly-

Robert Stone:

So on into the ’60s I guess, huh?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh yeah. It was, I think ’63 was our last year going out there because then we had bought the little farm down at Dorothy, New Jersey and he was up in-

Robert Stone:

You guys are hard to keep up with.

Jeannette Eason:

We bought a five acre farm out there for-

Robert Stone:

You found out you weren’t a farmer, right?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). $8,500 it cost and today-

Willie Eason:

Had mowing tractors.

Jeannette Eason:

… the farm now is selling close to $300,000.

Willie Eason:

Had my own tractor-

Jeannette Eason:

See, I was a farm girl.

Willie Eason:

… make our own rows and everything for planting and everything.

Jeannette Eason:

I taught him how to drive a tractor and when you get to the end of the road, hit the left brake and-

Robert Stone:

Turn it in.

Jeannette Eason:

… the tractor would turn right into your row and you come on back down.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Bob, we been together as a family, seemed like got… Oh, it was two guys that-

Jeannette Eason:

No, let me tell him this. Now when we was at Dorothy, nobody wanted to hire me. Same thing happened in Philadelphia. Now we’re coming into the winter months, right? So we stayed there until October. Now it’s going to get cold. So we learned how to cut the thermostat down, keep the pipes from bursting, right? We wrapped pipes and all. We come to Florida, ’60, ’61 and ’62 and stayed until about the, what, about the 25th of April?

Willie Eason:

Something like that.

Jeannette Eason:

That’s where the cane-

Robert Stone:

The sugar cane-

Jeannette Eason:

… came in-

Robert Stone:

Right.

Jeannette Eason:

… because our payment at the farm was on $85. The same payment we made on a three family house in Philadelphia was $80 a month and that one we sold and bought the farm. He was paying $85 for five acres and, what was it, eight rooms?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

With chicken houses on the property.

Robert Stone:

That was in Dorothy?

Jeannette Eason:

Dorothy, New Jersey, that’s 12 miles out of Vineland, 40 miles to-

Willie Eason:

Spelled just like a girl-

Jeannette Eason:

…. Atlantic City.

Willie Eason:

Spelled just like a girl’s name, Dorothy.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). There’s only one little school in the town and it was like, there’s this straight building like that, first grade through, I think it was fourth or something like that.

Robert Stone:

So that was in, what’d you say, ’60, ’61, ’62?

Jeannette Eason:

’61, ’62.

Robert Stone:

When you came down in Mother Pearls.

Jeannette Eason:

Mother Pearl, ’60, ’61 and ’62.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

We done that for three years and when we went back, he went to New York and was singing up in New York. I was working a concession stand at Lawnside, New Jersey.

Robert Stone:

Yeah, you told me once before. Why was it that Lawnside was an infraction? Wasn’t it something about being able to buy liquor on Sunday?

Jeannette Eason:

Oh, that’s what it was. The bars, everything was open on Sundays in Jersey.

Robert Stone:

In Jersey, but not in Pennsylvania.

Jeannette Eason:

Not in Pennsylvania.

Robert Stone:

So Lawnside is just across the border?

Jeannette Eason:

Right, just across the… what’s that bridge?

Willie Eason:

County Bridge-

Jeannette Eason:

Benjamin Franklin.

Willie Eason:

Benjamin Franklin.

Jeannette Eason:

Yes. So anybody could go over there and buy liquor.

Willie Eason:

Just go across the bridge and you’re in Philadelphia.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

On Sunday.

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Stone:

So, that was a big attraction, go on Sunday?

Jeannette Eason:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

They would flood that place. She had beautiful clothes there and light guys had some nice clothes out there.

Robert Stone:

So there’s a lot of Black people came in particular to Lawnside?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. You couldn’t get no white up in there, not in there.

Robert Stone:

Is that right?

Jeannette Eason:

Not with the motorcycle riders and she had a little bit of everything up in-

Robert Stone:

Ada told me she’s joined a motorcycle club.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah, she-

Robert Stone:

In Rodanthe, North Carolina.

Jeannette Eason:

North Carolina.

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah met Ada, huh?

Robert Stone:

Yeah, I talked to her just the other day.

Jeannette Eason:

My nephew, he didn’t want to tell me, but then he came out and told me when we was up there for the funeral that he’s cheap. I got his card and all, and on this card is, “God forgive, but we don’t.” He didn’t want me to know that and, “Auntie, I want to give you this card.”

Robert Stone:

Yeah. Tell me, it’s something I don’t have on tape either and I probably only got about 15 minutes worth of tape left is when you were growing up, they call you Shadow, right?

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Why is that?

Jeannette Eason:

I was a fast runner and a fast worker. My father would look out and he said, “Oh, there she is over there” and mother would tell him, said, “Well, call Shadow and tell her to come in.” Well, I would be over on the other side. I done finished that job over there, I’m going over there. And he always said, I was like a shadow, couldn’t nobody keep up with me. I used to run and catch the rabbits for him in the field.

Robert Stone:

You catch a rabbit?

Jeannette Eason:

Catch a rabbit.

Robert Stone:

How, with your hands?

Jeannette Eason:

With my hands. See, when the rabbit run, he, “Doo-doo-doo.” You got to know how to do it, and my mother taught me that. She was Cherokee Indian. My mother taught me how to shoot, how to throw-

Robert Stone:

How would you grab a rabbit?

Jeannette Eason:

With his hind leg. They shake you to death until you get that other leg, but once you get that one leg and your daddy said, “Don’t turn him loose,” you ain’t gonna turn him loose. You going to try to reach for all four legs at one time.

Robert Stone:

Because you ate them?

Jeannette Eason:

Huh? Oh, sure. Cleaned them and ate them. I was like-

Robert Stone:

You ever get bit?

Jeannette Eason:

No, I never got bit by one.

Robert Stone:

Didn’t you tell me that they’d use you to detect snakes?

Jeannette Eason:

No, this was the man I worked for that I bought that ’51 Pontiac from him in Sanford, my father. It was a man I worked in the fields with him and he was afraid of snakes and when he found out that once my feet touched the ground, I could tell him whether it was a snake on there. Where I got that from, I can’t explain it to nobody, but my feet, I get jittery. I get nervous.

Willie Eason:

Well, sometimes to me, all I can say is some kind of instinct and went up into-

Jeannette Eason:

I got jittery and nervous.

Willie Eason:

… and it came more from the older people, that instinct. You got that feeling. You can’t describe to tell where it comes from. All you know you got it and you move-

Jeannette Eason:

When I got to the field, he’d ask me, “Hey, Shadow?” I said, “Well, I feel it, but not as strong.” He says, “Okay. I’ll see you in a while,” and he’d go up high in this building and sit up there.

Robert Stone:

He’d go what?

Jeannette Eason:

Go up on the, what they call a mule train. It was conveying belt, you had packers on there that was packing the corn or whatever we was cutting, celery and then they had a truck on the other side that was loading it at the same time and I mean, big machine going through, I guess they carried close to 50, 100 rows of corn at one time.

Robert Stone:

So basically you did farm work all your life until you moved to Chicago with Willie?

Jeannette Eason:

All my life until I moved to Chicago with Willie, and then when we come to Dorothy and we come down here, I came back because I told them, I said, “Hey, we can make it in Florida, because I’ll go back to the field.” He said, “What’d you mean? I don’t want you in no field.” I go, “Oh, yes, I will go back to the fields,” but I ran out because the day I went to the car, the girl and I, Verna, going to the car in Pompano Beach, out in the country area, we’re going to get our lunch and this snake is going in the car. I left Verna standing. I ran all the way back to the main road and even running back, you had to jump over the snakes. It had to be like 100 degrees.

Jeannette Eason:

It had to be a “black panther,” but a canal separated us. And this is in the evening, I guess, about 4:00 or 4:30. We’s running down this road and I mean, I’m panting as it is, sweaty and all, and all at once we hear this noise, “Rrrrrww,” and she start, “Oh my God,” for that cat. Well, I had learned about the “black panther” and we got to running and we ran and they had one paved road coming out of Pompano, out to where the Black people lived at and all, and when we got to that road, we were so tired, we just laid down on the road like that.

Jeannette Eason:

We were scared to get on the dirt and a truck driver come along and took us up to the lady’s, the minister’s house where we were staying with Mother Pearl, and when we told him about the cat making that sound, he said, “Well, baby, the only thing saved your life was that canal because they do not like to get in the water and that stopped me from in the field. I was making $12 a day.

Robert Stone:

How far did you run you think?

Jeannette Eason:

Close to two miles an hour. It seemed like it was going to be 10, but it wasn’t that far.

Robert Stone:

You just couldn’t get away from those snakes.

Jeannette Eason:

Yeah. Oh God, and up until today I have no dealings with them. Don’t watch them on TV or nothing. Yep. Now I got to go pick up Dominique and Chantel. That’s part of my day.

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Jeannette Eason:

But they were supposed to be picked up-

Robert Stone:

Well, I got to get going.

Jeannette Eason:

Hey, they were supposed to be picked up at four.

Robert Stone:

I got to get going too. Alrighty.

Jeannette Eason:

I’ll be right on back with them, they right around the corner.

Robert Stone:

Okay.

Jeannette Eason:

But I just don’t allow them to walk home because there’s too much going on.

Robert Stone:

Right.

Willie Eason:

[inaudible 01:23:53]

Robert Stone:

I’m going to end the tape here.

Mike Stapleton:

What kind of bar are you using, Willie?

Willie Eason:

Well I use mostly this one. I’ve been using this one for about 35 years.

Mike Stapleton:

Just a big piece of brass.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, but I just use this because I had left this over at a fundraiser. I had been in Orlando, I think I told you, I played for a fundraiser, and I had been in Orlando, so I used that one, and that helped me keep bouncing around on the string, when you go to hit it. Because sometimes you get some of the rattle in the strings. I guess when you’re recording, you got to watch everything but I know sometimes you sit there, almost a whole day in the studio. You’re half hoarse, then you’ve got to come back again to set up everything in the studio for you to record. So-

Mike Stapleton:

How do you got this tuned?

Willie Eason:

In a A tuning. A tuning, what they call A tuning. We got the-

Robert Stone:

You got A, C sharp, E?

Willie Eason:

Well these three is tuned just like this.

Robert Stone:

Right, A, C sharp, E.

Willie Eason:

Right, so if I have to play the same song, if I have to play the words with the song I can play it on bass, because they’re tuned just like the front. See, now for instance, see if I just wanted to play a verse like this, take you see The Old Rugged Cross. See, I’m just playing a song, so I have to play the words of it. I’m not singing or nothing, and I let the congregation sing, if they say, “play a hymn.” So you have to do it like this. See, that’s a new pick and it sure make you make mistakes, but sometimes the audience, they don’t know, so you can get over them. You can go about that. See, this is the words. You know that song.

Mike Stapleton:

You do a lot of slanted bars too.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, a lot of times I do that to make the off key, the off note. You have to. There’s one there, see? And if you go up here, you see? Then when you go up here, it’s hard to do too many slants all the way up here, but back from here back I will slant a lot.

Mike Stapleton:

Put your slants on here.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, especially if I’m playing solos. You see, if I’m playing solos, then I can start slanting, that’s right.

Mike Stapleton:

I saw this. A lot of the other guys don’t do that.

Willie Eason:

No, because see, a lot of that they didn’t learn. Though I guess, probably playing so long, and getting it to be a part of me. Don’t forget, sometimes the guitar, I’ll be so hoarse doing a program, but I had to make the guitar make up for it. And see, just giving you an idea here, because sometimes I’ll be playing, things just come to me and I start putting it on the guitar, and you have to do that to fill in. Because see, I don’t have to tell you, Pentecostal people, they get to going, somebody start in a key over here, that means I got to change key, and they’re singing in the 12  keys, you don’t know where they’re going to start at, and you got to be able to play wherever they’re singing at.

Somebody’ll pick up a song over here, When the Saints Go Marching In. Another one’ll drop over here (singing). Like that, and you got to know where to pick them up at.

Robert Stone:

I know, it’s amazing. We’re both musicians, so when we see that-

Willie Eason:

Oh, no wonder he knows.

Robert Stone:

But when I say, when I watch Aubrey or Henry Nelson, they just start playing. I say, “How’s he know what key these people are in?” Because somebody out of the congregation’s singing, and-

Willie Eason:

They don’t get- some of the keys on the piano and organ that I’m not familiar with as good as I am other keys, and I’ll be so glad I can switch up. Sometimes I try to go up in another key, until I get them down in that key. If I want to get them in the F, see the chords F and G, B flat, and B flat is my main key, do you know what I mean? I’ll go ahead and play a little bit in C, I just fold them three or four chords there, just to be going along with the service. But then you got other people just be there playing, and they’re out of key, and the people singing are in another key. They disrupt the service.

Mike Stapleton:

Boy, especially on a fretless instrument, you get someone in between keys somewhere-

Willie Eason:

That’s right, that’s it. That’s it, yeah.

Mike Stapleton:

See, we both play fiddle, and it’ll happen with us. They’ll get between notes, and then you can’t match either one of them.

Willie Eason:

That’s it.

Mike Stapleton:

Broken string don’t work.

Willie Eason:

You got that too. Well you know, because you’s a musician, you know. There’s a lot of people, when you be sitting there doing it, I said, “Well these people don’t realize.” All they’re doing is having a good time, and they’re throwing back on you, for you to keep the service intact and spiritual, because it do throw off the service. It throws the service off. You singing in one key, and the music is playing in another key.

Mike Stapleton:

A lot of times they don’t know what it is, they just feel it’s not right.

Willie Eason:

Absolutely, absolutely. You got it.

Mike Stapleton:

Doesn’t look right.

Willie Eason:

I’ve heard a lot of the musicians do it, like be playing the Hawaiian guitar. So I showed them that you can play in all keys, and I just would show them, go back five… See, I play by the crosses here, and I show them, if you want to get an off key you go up three, come up in here like that. And some of them start playing that, but other than that they just play the regular four chords.

Mike Stapleton:

Whatever their ear sends them to is what’s going to happen. So did you start playing steel first? Was that your first instrument?

Willie Eason:

Yes. I started playing a wooden guitar, the old wooden guitar.

Robert Stone:

Acoustic. How old were you?

Willie Eason:

When I started playing that, I had to be about 15, I was playing it. But I was still playing the Hawaiian style across my lap, but it was pretty big in my lap.

Mike Stapleton:

Did you have a guitar where you raised up the strings, or was it a regular Hawaiian guitar?

Willie Eason:

No, when I went to electric, the only one I raised strings on was, and I wasn’t used to playing it, was the 16-string, see. The 16-string, let me see now. It was double-neck. I could play E7 over there and I could come back to my A tuning here. I could make my runs over here, on the E7. See, like I said, just like I said. I could, then I may hit up here an E7, and I make a run. But if I make the run, then I make it on E7, because it sounds better. This sounds better with the more Hawaiian style on the E7.

Mike Stapleton:

So you had a double-neck.

Willie Eason:

And I just played, but I feel comfortable, I even come back to it from a seven string to a six. I feel more comfortable there. I feel more comfortable there, because to me I can get just as much music out of the six strings, and I know Bishop Harrison from Bishop Jewell, he played the double-string. He played the 16. They had about five or six pieces, about six pieces in their band, see? One time I played for Bishop Lockley, he had about four pieces.

Mike Stapleton:

Now Bishop, what was his name? Bishop Lockley?

Willie Eason:

Bishop JR Lockley.

Mike Stapleton:

How do you spell his last name?

Willie Eason:

L-O-C-K-L-E-Y.

Mike Stapleton:

Okay, and where was he out of?

Willie Eason:

Well when they took me, they was living in Brooklyn, New York, because I went back there when I was 16 years old. That was after I got interested in it, it was hard for my mother to keep me in school, so she took me over to him, and so I went to traveling at that age. And of course, just a quick story behind that. I hate to go into that. After I found out what they was using me for with the big tent services and all, and I wouldn’t get nothing out of it, and they’re taking up all these offerings and whatnot. I had come up in a time when musicians didn’t get paid, so that’s what made me go to the streets. And I don’t know what Henry Nelson told you, I made my living from the street.

And not only that, I’m the father of 15 children, and I fed all them children. I had one daughter, she’s down at the Mantel now, she’s still in the reserves. She was in Saudi Arabia for… When I played for Lockley, but let me get back to this. When I was making on corners, like in Chicago? They liked to hear me sing, and I won’t try to mess with it too much now. Let me see. (singing) See, these are the songs that I had to do these type of lyrics. (singing – In the year of 1945, good president laid down and died. You know how all of the poor people felt, they received the message they lost Roosevelt …) Wait, that’s a little too low. Let me try to get a higher key. (singing) Then I go up there, that’s… (singing) See, below I play that. I just want, let me sing one verse of that for you. I have to rehearse it. (singing)

Oh, singing two songs. Excuse me, I’m singing two songs. I’m singing you Pearl Harbor, and then I’m trying to sing a little bit of the… She knew what I was doing. I don’t sing these songs, and people try and get me to sing them. I don’t sing these songs no more. Don’t let me do nothing on the guitar. I’m just going to let that background. Let me do a little bit of Roosevelt. Yeah, just let me do a little bit of Roosevelt, one verse of Roosevelt, then I’ll do a verse of Pearl Harbor, so you’ll see where I was getting both of them mixed up. Let’s see. (singing)

I don’t play that thing no more. Okay, now I’ll show you. That was one verse of Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt. But these are lyrics people used to like to hear- do on the street. That has about six verses to that. That’s how long each verse is.

Joeline Eason (Daughter of Willie and Jeannette Eason):

I like the one with the paint brush in it.

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Joeline Eason:

The one with the paint brush?

Speaker 5:

Oh yeah, Elizabeth Shoumatoff?

Joeline Eason:

Yeah, I like that one. I like that one.

Mike Stapleton:

You got a request.

Joeline Eason:

I like that.

Willie Eason:

That’s the first part of the song. Okay, if I make the… Wait a minute. How to I start in the… You know something, I don’t believe this.

Joeline Eason:

You have the brush-

Willie Eason:

Let me see. (singing)

Joeline Eason:

Don’t you rush (lyrics).

Willie Eason:

(singing) Now you see? Now that was the first verse. The verses are very long. So when I sung on the street, I got a guy come up there. I had an undertaker that used to come and give me five dollars. He’d say, “Sing it again.” Well then I couldn’t just keep singing them verses. I thought, “I’ve got a great big crowd around me.” Then I go back, what I done, I liked to sing the four verses I noticed they loved to hear. You can look at your audience and tell what they want to hear. And that’s when the money, they start throwing the money at you, so you go back to them verses. It’s like (singing). This is the song I’m getting confused with it. (singing) See, I’m getting the two songs mixed up, because the verses, it goes something alike. But these was lyrics that the people wanted to hear.

Robert Stone:

So you just carried a small amp with you and your guitar, and set up?

Willie Eason:

No, I had bigger amps then.

Mike Stapleton:

You had a big one.

Willie Eason:

This is more compact. If I go to a program now I can handle this here. But that other stuff, rolling on wheels and all that stuff.

Joeline Eason:

You had a megaphone type back then.

Mike Stapleton:

Yeah, boy them things were heavy on those days.

Willie Eason:

Well I put four wheels on mine. I put four wheels, no I could roll-

Mike Stapleton:

I can see why.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, then all that, I let someone else help. I had a big handle on it, so they just picked it up and carried it in the church.

Mike Stapleton:

And then the storefronts would let you plug in?

Willie Eason:

Oh yes. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah, if I’m on the street, what they’d do, like I come to your door here, this is your house. And I’d tell you, I’d say, “I’m a gospel singer, and I’d like to remember the service in a song, if you don’t mind.” And a lot of people, I made a lot of people happy. And don’t forget, in Jacksonville, Florida, I could go and tell you historical things that happened. Some of them used to just laugh. So one lady, she came out, and this was on Ashland and Davis in Jacksonville.

And I went to this project where these people lived, and back in those days, the people, they had these aprons like they was in the kitchen, and they’re making this dough flour. They rolled it to make the bread and stuff. And this lady that cried as soon as I start playing. I hit a good, fast number. Something I could sing fast, like they never heard a man… Something I come at. And I start playing the guitar and they say, “Oh, listen to that instrument. It’s saying the word.” Well this is what I want to get them, to start getting, I arouse them. This lady come out and she said, “My goodness, I’m wanting to go to church, and I couldn’t get to church, and God sent the church to me.” And she just shouting- you know- Yeah, I could tell you so many things.

Like I was playing Just a Closer Walk with Me. You’ve heard that song. And I was playing that song once. I said (playing)… And then I said (playing) … But you see, when I was doing this, see when I started doing it this lady said, she was standing but she was half high, and she said, “Don’t do that no more.” So I just do it for a minute, I go way down there and I said (singing), and I go way down the five keys and I come back. She said, “I told you not to do that no more.” And do you know what she done? The guitar was in my lap, because see at that time I didn’t have this belly. And so she just sit down on the guitar, and three or four men couldn’t hardly pull that lady off that. She said, “I told you not to do that.”

I have so many, I could tell you some things that, you’re talking about [inaudible 00:21:21], I wouldn’t even want to tell some things that happened. But I made real good money. In Chicago I would sit down and make, just over the weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday I could make about $500, just people throwing it. But I had men told me, I saw it later, but for some reason, I believe I could’ve been a millionaire just over three or four times, but the only thing about me, I was too honest. In other words, I have guilt if I do you wrong. The guilt rests on me. I’ve even tried to try to get in my mind, to try to go after some of the money that… Even when they had me in the studio once, they had me there and they said…

So I used to be a promoter. I used to promote five or six, as high as 10 groups at one time. Like James Cleveland, the Soul Stirrers, all them. I used to promote all of them. Shirley Cecil, all of them. I used to promote them. I don’t know whether Henry Nelson told you that or not.

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, they would’ve told you, yeah, I was a promoter. I remember one time I had put 5500, that’s the Met, Broad and Poplar in Philadelphia, and they wouldn’t let me put, the fire marshal wouldn’t let me put nobody else in the building. They had them standing all over on the walls, and whatnot. And that was the Davis Sisters’ anniversary. That’s who I promoted there.

Robert Stone:

When was that?

Willie Eason:

That was-

Robert Stone:

When were you promoting?

Willie Eason:

Now that program with the Davis Sisters, in ’59. I remember that. That was 1959 in Philadelphia at the Met, Broad and Poplar.

Robert Stone:

So in the ’50s you were promoting?

Willie Eason:

Oh yes, oh yes. I was promoting on in through the ’60s. I got to be a pretty big promoter. When I met Sam Cooke, he was going to DuSable High School. I promoted, I used the auditorium at DuSable High School in Chicago. Right there on, I can’t think of the name of that street. State Street in Chicago, that’s where I promoted at. One time I had, my aggregation was, I had both groups of the Blind Boys from Alabama and Mississippi. And then what happened was, they had to even stay at my house. Then I had the Davis Sisters on that program. And at the time both of them had hot records. So that’s what you go by, anyhow. You pull those hot records, that’s what pulls the people. And what I done, I had my placard. I had to use big placards. And it read, “Will the famous Davis Sisters defeat both groups of the Five Blind Boys?” and that was my seller. I tell you.

Mike Stapleton:

That was your draw.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, and I’d have them stand in line, and Chicago blocks is long. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but they’re long. Long blocks, like almost three blocks of the regular block. People standing all the way down. Couldn’t hardly get them in, that’s right. And the money was coming in through the window. My wife asked me, I had to go get change. We had run out of change. And my wife was ticket girl, plus her mother, and she said, “What are we going to do?” I said, “Look, I’m going to go and get change. All I ask you, keep that door,” where they come into there, that door to where you enter, where the cashier was. I said, “Don’t let nobody come in that door. Just rake the money on the floor,” because the drawer was full. And I just hat them rake the money over, down on the floor. That’s right. That’s right. These things, like I say, I never forget that. The big things that happened in my life.

Robert Stone:

Sure, sure. How about your recordings? You said you’ve done, what? Three or four?

Willie Eason:

I tell you, Canyon Queen is out of Cincinnati, but I was trying to study, was I in Atlanta when this guy, when they took me in and done that session. I only done four sides. That was a 78 record.

Robert Stone:

And when would that be about?

Willie Eason:

I’m only going to guess. All I can do is guess. Let’ see. Every time I say that, but I’m not… I’m trying to think, the main number. See, that song wasn’t the main number. Because see, they take the selling side, that’s the seller. But they just said, “Do three other numbers to make the session.” I had to do the four numbers. That’s on a 78 record. You remember the 78s. So I know, In Every Time and… No, it’s No Grumblers There.

Mike Stapleton:

No Grumblers There.

Willie Eason:

No Grumblers There. Just let me do a little bit of it here.

Mike Stapleton:

Sure, go ahead.

Willie Eason:

To show you, I think I can remember a little bit of it.

Joeline Eason:

Willie, that wasn’t the main-                                

Willie Eason:

I know, that wasn’t the main number that they wanted. The main number, they just told me to build around it. Let’s see. (singing) And I remember that much of it.

Robert Stone:

Is that original?

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Robert Stone:

Is that your composition?

Willie Eason:

That’s mine, that’s my comp-

Robert Stone:

Same with the Roosevelt song?

Willie Eason:

The Roosevelt song is mine, yeah. Pearl Harbor. But I tell you what I done. I remember I lost the lyrics. But that daughter that you saw sitting over there, they got together, because they done heard me sing. She remembered some of it, my wife remembered some of it. Every time I get to a part or verse, they would help me think of the rest. So what I done, while we’re done, when I went to the motel, and what we done, we put it back together. So that’s what I done. I put it on paper, so that way if I had to go back and if I had to redo it, because see, I don’t like what they’ve done. See they didn’t let me sing it, my style that I was singing on the street, the way the people craved over it. They made me sing it the Soul Stirrers way.

 This was before Sam Cooke was with the Soul Stirrers. This was Harris, he was leading. And to me, he could out sing Sam Cooke, only Sam Cooke had the wavery voice. That pretty wavery voice. But the old man, we used to call him the old man, Harris. He was the main guy. I remember when, at Deuce Harbor High School, Sam Cooke, that’s where he used to go to high school, before he come out and went with the group. That’s right, and he was waiting to come out, to go with the Soul Stirrers there. That’s how far I go back. So even Sam Cooke, he got carried away. I remember at 47th and Prairie, and I was at 58th and Prairie in Chicago. He wanted to go out in the street because he got to see all them people and whatnot, so they even made some kind of flatbed truck and they used to set me up. And even Henry Nelson can tell you, in Jamaica, Long Island, they used to set me up in a high bed truck, because there were so many people. Just all around me, and I just entertained them, just from the guitar, and they just loved to hear me.

Willie Eason:

And sometimes I’d just have a prayer with them. I remember, that same place, on that bed truck, by Henry Nelson and his wife, her father, they all came out, that was the first time they had ever seen me, and I was on this corner, and people wanted prayer so bad, and whatnot. And I guess they thought I was the man, and what I done, I just had them over. They was all standing. Now some people had got seats, brought their chairs and all, just all over this vacant lot, but I had them all standing on the street because now the police coming. He said, “Look,” he was, “Can’t you make them come in?” Said, “You’ve been standing on the street corner long enough. Can’t you go tell them…” And I tell you, I could tell you, I could go on and tell you some things have happened in my life.

Willie Eason:

But God did bless me down through the years. Even though I was soft-hearted, and let people took me in for my monies and all, God blessed me. I believe though, even now sometimes I let my mind go, but I try to throw it off me, because the Lord really blessed me and gave me a living through it. But I was taken, like the Bishop Lockley and all of them, they just used me, and just took me, and it’s like, “You’re going to hell if you don’t play.” Like frighten you and scare you up, and I got in all that trend and whatnot. But I found out that it was altogether different as I got older.

Robert Stone:

And this is when you were a teenager? Or-

Willie Eason:

Yeah, I was a teenager. I was a teenager, and on into my early 20s, but that’s when I… After I got married, I knew I had to go out and make a living. That’s when I started making a living with it. Really started making a living with it. That’s when I got on the road and started traveling. Had my own car, bought my own first house at 22 years old.

Robert Stone:

Wow.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, in Philadelphia.

Robert Stone:

In Philadelphia.

Willie Eason:

1203 Flora Street.

Robert Stone:

Where were you born?

Willie Eason:

Well I tell you, I thought I was born in Philadelphia, because what I knew myself, I went to school when I was five years old at the Ludlow School, Sixth and Master Street. I got a brother live there now, on Master Street. He’s 78 years old. And I went to school there, but a street between Sixth and Seventh, called Randolph Street. When I knew myself, that’s where I lived at, and when I come to myself, see, all I knew, I was born in Philadelphia. That’s where I thought I was born at, but then after I got in my 60s, and to draw social security and whatnot, the only way I could do it, you got to get the birth certificate. Because all that time, I didn’t have my birth certificate.

Because I have an aunt now, but she’s 106, she’s in Plains, Georgia, but she’s still living. She’s a great… She was not one of these here fake healers. I was even healed through her. I remember when I was about eight or nine years old, I couldn’t walk or nothing. And I know she fasted and prayed with me. Oh gosh, I don’t know how many days. I know she went high as 30 and 31 days. No water, no drink. And my mother died, she come off of fasting, she ate the wrong thing. She got a lot of indigestion. She come off a big, about a 18-day fast, and she ate this cabbage at night, and she’s in the country. So but anyhow, they prayed for me, I got all right. They just said I was one of the blessed childs out of the part… My mother was 18. My wife’s mother’s mother was 19. I’m the father of 15. There’s one sitting there, and there’s one sitting there that you saw. So what I got-

Robert Stone:

So where were you born?

Willie Eason:

Oh, come back, I’m glad you brought me back. You’ve got to tell me. Look, I’m getting old. My thoughts waver. That’s why I’m glad you brought me back there. No, so after I got the certificate that showed I was born, I wasn’t even named. I wasn’t even named. They had to go back, the way they had to find the social security, what child was born between this child and that child? That’s how they got there. And I was born in Georgia.

Robert Stone:

What’s the date?

Willie Eason:

Believe it or not, they made me a year older. That’s been recent, that was in the last six years. When I got the certificate, because right now I’m supposed to be 70 going on 72. I’ll be 72 my next birthday. My mother gave me July the 15th, but it’s June 26th. I was born of a midwife.

Robert Stone:

June 26th, what year?

Willie Eason:

1921, instead of 1922.

Robert Stone:

And where in Georgia?

Willie Eason:

This was Waycross County. That’s out at Ellaville, Georgia.

Robert Stone:

All right.

Willie Eason:

You’ve got to bring my mind back. My children, they say, “Daddy, well you know you…” I say, “Yeah,” I say, “I forget, because I have to keep a lot of things on my mind, don’t forget.” Even after you hear me talking, I guess you can see, I went down through it with a lot of things. I’ve been into a lot of things, with the churches and ministers, and so many things. Then I come to be a minister myself. I never went in for… Because that wasn’t my gift, of healing, and all of this here. I’m not no fake.

I don’t put on, like I see a lot of… I know a lot of ministers, whatnot, I’ve had them tell me in Chicago. Say, “Man, you draw this kind of crowd,” and the guy come in my audience in ’47, I’ll never forget that. He took the little perfume bottle. I don’t know if y’all ever seen the little round perfume bottles?

Robert Stone:

Yes.

Willie Eason:

Okay. They used to have gardenias perfume in them and all. He’d take his and put olive oil in them. That man stood back there, and five dollars was like $25 is now. And he stood there, he saw me playing, and drawing this crowd. He said, “You don’t know what you’ve got.” The only thing about me, yeah, I could’ve made the money, but I’d have been guilty. That’s the only thing. If I could only avoid the guilt. But the thing is, I’m like a person, I want to feel free, I want to be free.

Mike Stapleton:

You’ve got to sleep with yourself at night.

Willie Eason:

That’s it. That’s right. That’s why I could never be with none of these hatred groups. I don’t care, Black or White. I could never be with neither one of them, you see what I mean? Because I’m too honest, I don’t believe that. See, all I know is one Adam and one Eve. You know what I’m saying? And I don’t hate. We’ve got a lot of, if you see, we’ve had some… Let me show you some of our pictures. Show there’s white that’s married in all of our family. My wife’s father, he’s Irish and he’s French. And that was back in World War I, see? And so I mean, so I don’t have nothing to do with what these people do or what you do or what you do. Only I try to live my life, and if I saw you, anything, if on the street, anything. And then if I could help you out, that’s how I feel, because I want to be real.

I try to be real, and I guess, yeah, I got hurt. I got hurt, like I said, financially and all of that. But as I think of it, yeah, sometimes it gets to me if I let it get to me, but-

Mike Stapleton:

Live and learn.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, but I really learned the hard way.

Joeline Eason:

Like what I tell people a lot of times, what’s amazing is that for me as his child, to have seen him go into the fields and different places throughout various cities and whatnot, playing his instrument. Not having to work any job or anything, and to give us, his kids, certain basic value in terms of respect for life and everything.

Willie Eason:

She finished college up in Ramapo, up in New Jersey. I lived in Jersey, too. Lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, lived in Ringwood. That’s where I lived before I came down here. When he said… You was the one that I was talking to wasn’t it, over the phone?

Mike Stapleton:

Over the phone.

Willie Eason:

So when you called I said, “How in the world could this man get my phone number?” Then it come back to me after he said-

Mike Stapleton:

It was amazing.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, but I said to myself, “He had to go something to get that number, to track me down.” But then it come back to me, I said, “Yeah, but you is known, and look what you done done, all over, everybody.” When you said, “Willie Eason,” and everybody would know.

Mike Stapleton:

You left a trail.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, but what it is, a lot of thousands and thousands of people, just wouldn’t know that phone number, or whatnot. They’d know about, I come out of Philadelphia and New York, but they would never know, to try to reach me.

Mike Stapleton:

Well we got you out of the thick of it. Right in the middle of that church. If someone in that church didn’t have your phone number, then wasn’t nobody’s going to have your phone number.

Willie Eason:

That’s right, yeah. Boy, I’m telling you, you said Mary Nelson. She used to be-

Robert Stone:

Mary Linzy.

Willie Eason:

Linzy, yeah. Well she got married, she used to be Mary Nelson. That’s Henry Nelson’s sister.

Mike Stapleton:

Right, she lives in Ocala. We were starting talking about the records, recordings you made.

Willie Eason:

Okay, come back.

Mike Stapleton:

What was it, Aladdin? Did you say-

Willie Eason:

Oh yeah, Aladdin, that was on part one and part two. That’s Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt. Because the song was so long, the verses are long.

Mike Stapleton:

And about when was that?

Willie Eason:

Okay, let me see. Can I… I can only tell you approximately. Let’s see. In ’59 I was in Philadelphia. ’59.

Joeline Eason:

Who was the baby?

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Joeline Eason:

Who was the baby at the time? Me or Katie?

Willie Eason:

… You had to be the baby. Either was just before you…

Joeline Eason:

I was born in ’54.

Willie Eason:

’54, I think this was back ’49. These were back, ’49. Had to go back, like in the… Let’s see, ’54? ’54. That’d be around about ’49, ’48.

Mike Stapleton:

If you were singing about Roosevelt, is that-

Willie Eason:

Roosevelt, that was in… I got a sheet of paper where I took the song from about President Roosevelt, got by the Elizabeth Shoumatoff on that, she was painting a picture of Roosevelt, just before his death. I got that old paper. I found that old newspaper, and I keep that clip. That’s right, because that’s what I took the song from. Elizabeth, she was painting the picture of him. He was in the rocking chair.

Robert Stone:

So that’s what-

Willie Eason:

And he had infantile paralysis.

Robert Stone:

That was in the ’30s.

Willie Eason:

Okay, well then that’s when I done the Roosevelt.

Robert Stone:

And Roosevelt, what label was he on? The reason I’m asking, I think we can probably-

Willie Eason:

Roosevelt is on Aladdin. Aladdin.

Robert Stone:

Aladdin.

Willie Eason:

That was a Black label like Peacock label. See, I’m giving them to you as I remember it. Part one and part two.

Robert Stone:

Okay, because it was long. It was on a 78, so you had both sides of it, same song.

Willie Eason:

It was part one on one side, and part two on the other side. In other words, you see I sung one verse, do you see how long the song is? So ain’t no way in the world for you to get that much on… Now that’s a historical song. It all was taken out too, all out of the paper, where the artist was painting a picture of him just before his death. He was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage. All that reads just like I’m singing it, only I just made some rhyme at the end, made the word-

Robert Stone:

You were singing and playing the steel, Hawaiian guitar. Was there other instruments on there? Did you have drums or anything?

Willie Eason:

No, believe it or not, you wouldn’t ever believe it. Just like you see me sitting there playing, that’s the way I was playing. I had to play my own background. When I was playing with Bishop Lockley, when we had them five people, you got an electric Spanish guitar, I don’t have to do no filling in. And all that filling in, trying to keep timing and all, I didn’t have to do all of that. But here, I’ve got to try to keep timing. I’ve got to sing the words, you know what I mean? Lyrics. Then backgrounding, then I have to keep my same beat, because I ain’t got no drum, see? Now I’ll tell you, if you had a guy pulling the strings, then that’s okay. That could substitute for a drum. But the drum is the main thing. Right now, if I’ve got a drum, it makes me feel like I’m at ease, because I won’t make as many mistakes. Like I’m coasting, because the drum is filling in. I’ve got good timing.

So you fellows know what I’m talking about. I’ve got timing. But here I’ve got to get my timing, get my timing right. That’s right. Sometimes the audience will slow me down, and I’ve got my timing. Here, I’m supposed to be up here. (singing) But that’s my beat. But when I performed it, they got me down here, got me dragging.

Mike Stapleton:

It’s tough to slow down. It’s easy to speed up. Man, it’s tough to slow down.

Willie Eason:

See what? And see a lot of people, they don’t understand. Unless, like you said, if you’s a musician, you know what’s happening to me. Like my daughter, who’s over there. She sang, but she just hates to venture out. I’ve been trying to push her. She sang with a choir, a beautiful choir. But I just can’t get her to… Every time I go somewhere, “You ain’t got none of your sons and none of your daughters?” And everybody I’ve taught in my immediate family, I taught them like the people in churches, and that’s how they was able to play Hawaiian for their churches and all. That’s right, because I know a lot of it they picked up they self, because I listen to a lot of them play, and they pick up a lot of that they self, but I’m the one starting them. Because they play different styles.

Mike Stapleton:

Who taught you to play steeL.

Willie Eason:

I’ll tell you where I got the idea from. My style is my own, but where I started from, my oldest brother, a fellow came from Hawaii. This was a Hawaiian. And I didn’t ever know, I always thought, I listened to the Hawaiian music on the record or whatnot, it would sound like they had electric guitar until I went to Hawaii and I had to play in Hawaii. And that’s when I… That’s right. She was stationed in Hawaii. That’s how I got there. Me and my wife went over.

Robert Stone:

But that was later.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, that was… You want to call me back, because my mind- I’ll tell you, because there’s too much on my mind. If you ask-

Robert Stone:

When you were starting out, your-

Willie Eason:

Yeah, I’m coming back, yeah so-

Robert Stone:

Your brother Troman, he played.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, so he played. But this guy come from Hawaii, and before he went back he started teaching my brother how to play the Hawaiian music, and I used to try, if I caught his back turned I would try to see if I could do it. I was about seven, eight years old.

Mike Stapleton:

And Troman was what? 10 years older than you?

Willie Eason:

Had to be. He had to be, yeah. 10 or 11 years older than I am. I can tell you, about 10, because I got a brother 78. That was Charlie. Then Blondie was older than Charlie, so Blondie would have had to have… 78, 79, 80. So Blondie would have to be about 80, and then Mamie if she was living, and then Troman. So it’d have to be about 10 years. He’d have had to be about 10 years older. So, because that’s where I got the idea, from listening to him, and I bought this old wooden box I told you about. Beat box. And that’s how I started trying to pick out the notes on that, listening to him. Now I’ll tell you, one of the first songs I played, Home Sweet Home. And then the old Sweet By and By. We shall meet on the other shore. Those are songs I used to play.

Mike Stapleton:

Did they ever teach you Hawaiian songs?

Willie Eason:

The only Hawaiian song that I played a little bit of was Blue Hawaii.

Mike Stapleton:

Blue Hawaii.

Robert Stone:

Do you remember who this Hawaiian guy was that Troman learned from? Got a-

Willie Eason:

No, I’ll-

Robert Stone:

Was that right in Philadelphia?

Willie Eason:

That was in Philadelphia, yeah. This guy, believe it or not. I’ve never seen him. I’ve never seen that guy. I never seen him. I was small, I never seen him.

Robert Stone:

Just heard about him.

Willie Eason:

But all I know, that he had the sheet music in front of him, and he would play. What they would do, they would take the note music and transfer it into what they called-

Mike Stapleton:

Tablature?

Willie Eason:

Os, Os like… If you’re going to hit the strings straight across without curving the bar, then you have a straight line of Os. Each O was for that string. But if you was going to hit the second string, it wouldn’t be an O there. It would be an O on the second string, on the second line. So you know how music lines read. They used to make an old F sign before the music there. Well he read that type of a sheet, but he transferred it from the notes, like do re me fa sol la ti do, you remember that?

Mike Stapleton:

Sure.

Willie Eason:

Well he took the notes, the notes were made always with that black oval, that line up like that. But they would transfer that music over to these numbers.

Mike Stapleton:

Like a graph.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, and so I even learned to read Home Sweet Home. Yeah, I learned how to read it on the guitar, and I played Home Sweet Home. Nearer My God to Thee was my second song. That’s right. And then after I learned that, I was brought up in the Holiness Church, Pentecostal. So I just had the rhythm already there. It was already there.

Robert Stone:

Now were your parents ministers, or anything in the church, or just active members?

Robert Stone:

Now, were your parents ministers or anything in the church, or just active members in the church?

Willie Eason:

Just active members.

Robert Stone:

And there’s Troman, but Troman, he started playing gospel music.

Willie Eason:

I’ve got one minister. She’s in Philadelphia, but this was later. She’s about three years older than me now. And she’s a minster. She went to Moody Bible Institute there in Philadelphia. She was raised there in Philadelphia, but she was born in Georgia. For me on up and the other children under me was born in Philadelphia. But from me on up was born in Georgia.

Robert Stone:

Georgia.

Willie Eason:

And under me, the four kids under me were born in Philadelphia.

Robert Stone:

So Troman learned from a Hawaiian guy, that got him started.

Willie Eason:

His teacher, he was Hawaiian, he definitely was Hawaiian.

Robert Stone:

Now, did he start on the acoustic or electric? Did he start on just a box guitar? He must-

Willie Eason:

No. He was playing… See, what it was, like I told you, over in Hawaii on that whole island there was only one electric guitar, Hawaiian guitar. And that guy got it from America, came from America. I learnt that part. It came from America. They played on regular guitars, regular guitars, just like I was playing on the big, wooden guitar, that’s what they play on. Only thing they’d do, they raised the string with a piece of steel like that. They raised the strings, that’s what they do.

Robert Stone:

Did you ever see any of those metal guitars, National guitars?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. It’s called all-steel. I played one of them.

Robert Stone:

You did?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, I played one of them. I left the wooden guitar. They had a better ring to it, a better sound.

Robert Stone:

Louder.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. That’s right. I went from there on to this type of instrument. I’ve got another guitar that’s much older than this one. I’ve got two, I think. I know I’ve got one right there in the closet that’s older than this one. I just keep it.

Robert Stone:

I’ve noticed a lot of the other guys, they use the Stevens, what I call the Stevens-type bar. It’s got that slot in it.

Willie Eason:

I used that for a while. I used it for-

Robert Stone:

Do you like this better? You’ve come back to it?

Willie Eason:

Well, for me, I’ll tell you, I think, to me, I guess it’s all in my mind, that for, some reason, this will give you a better melody. It making the harmony when you pick it out, or either you chime the guitar. I pick out chimes. If I’m playing slow numbers you can pick out the chimes and make your runs.

Robert Stone:

Most of these other guys don’t do that.

Willie Eason:

Well, I know-

Robert Stone:

Do you play the harmonics as chimes?

Willie Eason:

You know, I’ve had a lot of standing around when I used to do all this here. You could stand there and just chirp it. See, but you’ve got to have that bar on the fret, and you’ve got to be able to hit it right or a certain distance down, how many lines down to get it to chirp. You can put it one up or one below and you won’t get the-

Robert Stone:

It won’t do it.

Willie Eason:

That’s right, it won’t get the chirp. It’ll get that Hawaiian chirp. As soon as you get it, if you want to run it, you run it to where you want to run it because the guitar will hold the sound, so you run it there. That’s right.

Robert Stone:

That’s a good-sounding guitar.

Willie Eason:

Well, I like it. I had three of them just like that. I sold one of them. The other one, I donated to my son. He plays. They tell me he’s doing pretty good, my other son in Orlando.

Robert Stone:

He’s in Orlando?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

What’s his name?

Willie Eason:

His name is Willie Jr.

Robert Stone:

Willie Jr.?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

And he’s playing. There’s not a House of God church there.

Willie Eason:

It’s a Church of God.

Robert Stone:

Church of God.

Willie Eason:

Yeah. Its name is Church of God.

Robert Stone:

We might want to get ahold of him. That’d be nice.

Willie Eason:

Let me see. In one of my books I’ve got his-

Robert Stone:

Maybe before we leave-

Willie Eason:

I’ll can give it. I’m pretty sure he ain’t changed his phone.

Robert Stone:

You know what? One thing that we’re after in this project, we like the idea of including generations, one, two, maybe three. See, you’re almost a generation older than, say, Henry Nelson. Now, Henry, you inspired Henry to play.

Willie Eason:

Oh, yeah, I’m the one taught him. I’m the one taught him his first note.

Robert Stone:

Is that right?

Willie Eason:

I taught him his first note. He never would have played no guitar. That wasn’t what he would even think, but what it was, he got carried away because he saw how the people carried away over me and the church. See, his father, I used to go play for his father’s assemblies. I married his sister. He got enthused, and he just went to playing.

Willie Eason:

But he was one that had told all these other boys in Detroit, because he would meet them in the general assembly in Nashville, Tennessee. Because I know I went up to Bishop Fletcher’s funeral in Philadelphia, and several of these boys was there, and they were so happy to meet me. Guess what they called named me, called me? The Legend.

Robert Stone:

The Legend.

Willie Eason:

The Legend. That was the first time I heard that, they called me The Legend. Believe it or not, they took me, after the funeral and all, after the undertaker took the body and everything out, they had took me back upstairs and these boys wanted to hear, because Henry Nelson had been telling them, he said, “Now, he can play the words of the song,” and said all that. Said, “He can sing with it too,” and then when he went to describing it and they [inaudible 00:26:02]. They had heard my name so much, but these was like young boys coming on. So they carried me back up in the church.

Willie Eason:

I didn’t want to play, but all of them gathered around, about six of them. Henry, he was there in the bunch. He called me Bill. He said, “Bill, play a number. Play it, let them see. I want them to see. They think I’m joking.” So, I went on and played, I’ll never forget, I played Peace In The Valley. I played a solo number, a little bit of I Never Heard A Man.

Willie Eason:

I’ll never forget, I got a little carried away there. I said, “What did you say?” I was talking to the guitar. I said, “No,” because sometimes I do these things when you’re performing. I said, “Oh, hush your mouth,” and then let the guitar come in again. I said, “No,” like that, just like we’re going back and forth. These are things what the audience like and they want that. So, I played it. And I was trying to get my music up. They wouldn’t let me take up or nothing. They wanted me to play on, that’s right. They must have gave me about $26 there among themselves, said, “Well, do this. Do this. Do that.” And I just went on, and I said, “Just to make them feel happy.”

Willie Eason:

Oh, one of the guys from Detroit, one of the boys, I really enjoyed what he said, it was very encouraging. He said, “Tell me, you play… I never heard nobody just play the exact words,” like I played Old Rugged Cross or Blessed Assurance. I just played the exact words of the song, string-for-string, each note-for-note. So he said, “I heard them all play,” he said, “But they can’t play the words like that, just play the words of the song like that.” He said, “Gosh.” He said you got… Some kind of word he used, I don’t know. He said, “Man, that is something.” Most of them, if the service was going on, they just hit anything on the guitar because people don’t know. It’s better if they can stay in-tune and don’t go out-of-tune, as long as they stay in that key, the right key. But it’s bad when you’re playing in one key and they’re singing in another. It disrupts the service.

Robert Stone:

Man, what-

Willie Eason:

Wouldn’t you fellows…We’ve got some- Would you like to have some hot coffee?

Joeline Eason:

There’s soda too.

Willie Eason:

Some soda or coffee, soda?

Robert Stone:

I might have a little soda.

Willie Eason:

She’ll make you some cold soda. I’m just sitting here talking. I forgot she had some soda.

Robert Stone:

We keep getting off the track of recordings.

Willie Eason:

I’m glad you’re bringing me back. My zipper done… Oh, I know, I got it backwards. I got my zipper, I put it on backwards. It keeps sliding. Aladdin, like I told you, King and Queen and Savoy.

Robert Stone:

Aladdin, King and Queen.

Willie Eason:

The only thing I can tell you about Savoy, I would have to remember, but I can tell you who recorded with me because that’s how I got them on Savoy.

Robert Stone:

Who was that?

Willie Eason:

The Gay Sisters, God Will Take Care Of You.

Robert Stone:

God Will Take Care Of You.

Willie Eason:

(singing).

Robert Stone:

So they were singing and you were playing?

Willie Eason:

No, no, no. They made their own session, and they recorded me separately.

Robert Stone:

I see.

Willie Eason:

This guy wanted to know did I know anybody else. And I got several artists for recording companies because I could always tell talent. I wasn’t no real scout, but to get somebody far enough.

Robert Stone:

What are some of the titles you did for Savoy?

Willie Eason:

I can’t remember. The only thing I can tell you, if you go back, because we both recorded the session at the same time, if you go back and get the Gay Sisters on Savoy records, “God Will Take Care,” that was their main number.

Robert Stone:

And about what year was that? Do you remember, roughly?

Willie Eason:

That’s the only thing I can do is to tell you roughly, only thing I can tell you is roughly. Let’s see, ’50- It had to be in the ’40s. It had to be around the ’50s. It had to be in the ’50s. Had to be in the ’50s.

Robert Stone:

You know what I’m going to try and do is see if I can nail some of these down.

Willie Eason:

Another side of “God Will Take Care Of You” was “Jesus Is A Way Maker.” I can even hit a little bit of it because I remember that one on the piano. Jesus is a way maker, one day he made a way for me when my way was dark and dreary, Jesus came and answered my prayers. One day he made a way for me. These were two beautiful girls. Three of them used to sing, but I know one of them stopped singing, just the two of them, Evelyn, and I forget the other girl’s name.

Robert Stone:

Henry said he thought you had a pretty good hit with “Just A Closer Walk With Thee.”

Willie Eason:

“Closer Walk With Thee,” but I don’t know. I think I recorded it.

Robert Stone:

He said he thought they played that on WLAC down in Nashville on Randy’s records.

Willie Eason:

Could have. There’s another one that they heard me. Oh, and Every Town and City, I know they played that because they called me.

Robert Stone:

In Every Town and City?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, about No Grumblers There.

Robert Stone:

No Grumblers, and that’s yours?

Willie Eason:

That’s mine, yeah.

Robert Stone:

Your composition.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. They called me. They singers too, that’s off of my brother’s family there in Philadelphia. I taught him. He played the guitar. He used to do the same thing I would do on the street corners, made a zillion.

Robert Stone:

Who was that?

Willie Eason:

But he didn’t make nothing like I made. His name was Henry Eason. Henry, he’s dead.

Robert Stone:

That’s right. I heard of him too.

Willie Eason:

He’s dead. His wife called me and told me, said… She heard him out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She was living in Philly, but he was on some station. Harrisburg is like 100 miles from Philly, from Philadelphia. This guy, some kind of disc jock was playing it. And so she heard it, and she was trying to surprise me because they taped it. They taped it. And she asked me, said, “Do you know this is?” “Yeah, yeah.” I was shocked. I really was shocked. Yeah, you guys, boy, I’m telling you, I was shocked. When you went to telling me and said, “Henry Nelson,” and you went to naming them all, several of them, and Jewell Dominion. I said, “How this man found it?” I said, “It’s God.” Boy, you’re really with it.

Robert Stone:

It’s been almost two years, when you add it all up, that we’ve been working on it. Mike started gathering names in a store, and I’ve got a list of players. Now some of them are not very accomplished, all the way up to the guys who play a lot. I’ve got about 16 or 17 players around just in Florida, and also Henry. But you know Henry may be moving back to Florida.

Willie Eason:

What?

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

Let me see do I have-

Robert Stone:

He really wants to. He’s trying to get it together to move back to Ocala.

Willie Eason:

He would tell me. See, I had a barbecue place up there. He used to come in there and sit.

Robert Stone:

That’s right, you used to have a restaurant here. We tried that angle. I called every hotel and restaurant commission to see if there was a license under your name or something.

Willie Eason:

I was in Brooklyn. I was in Brooklyn. I had-

Robert Stone:

But you didn’t have a restaurant here in St. Petersburg?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. I’m the Fat Willie From Philly. In fact, just for curiosity, let me show you something. Let me just show you. Let me show you. I named my business there Fat Willie From Philly. You need something for attraction. This is one of my… I’ve been in so many things. I was going through some papers, and that came up.

Mike Stapleton:

Sweet potato pies.

Robert Stone:

So that was Fat Willie From Philly at 1371 16th Street South.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. If you go around there you’ll see the great, big sign, the great, big sign up there.

Robert Stone:

It’s still there?

Willie Eason:

It’s still there, it sure is.

Robert Stone:

You sold it out?

Willie Eason:

Yeah. See, what it was, my children thought that we could do the business down here we done in New York. See, because I done the chicken and ribs on a rotisserie. That’s the reason I’m so shocked at Kentucky chicken. Now mine, I’m cooking the same chicken. I’m down here before they ever thought about starting it with the rotisserie, but I was in the wrong spot.

Willie Eason:

My kids thought, because we used to have them standing on the wall waiting for them to come off the rotisserie. See, when I do the rotisserie, it’d be right in the window. And people just passing, when they look at it, they want it, that’s right. You see the grease dropping, it drops down in the pan. And, see, even from up at the top when that grease comes from the chicken it drops on the other one, and it keep them shiny and greasy. And people passing by, oh, we sold, oh, god. That’s right.

Joeline Eason:

[inaudible 00:36:08] too. You taught Uncle Henry’s kids, his daughters how to play, Henrietta and them.

Willie Eason:

She’s talking about my brother Henry Eason, the one I told you about in Philadelphia. His wife called down and told me about they heard me on that station. I taught her. She plays, one of his daughters is playing Hawaiian guitar.

Robert Stone:

Really? And what’s her name?

Willie Eason:

What is her name?

Joeline Eason:

Henrietta.

Robert Stone:

Henrietta?

Willie Eason:

No, that’s not Henrietta.

Joeline Eason:

Which one was that one?

Willie Eason:

It’ll come to me. Huh? No, it’s not Henry. Henrietta is the oldest one. It’ll come to me.

Robert Stone:

She’s living in Philadelphia?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, she’s in Philadelphia.

Speaker 5:

Roslyn, isn’t it?

Willie Eason:

No, that’s not Roslyn, no it ain’t, nope, nope, nope. Thought you had it. I thought I had my- I was going to give him… It would have to be in my other book, my address book, my main address book.

Joeline Eason:

Dorie Miller died in 1943.

Willie Eason:

You ain’t got that paper?

Joeline Eason:

That’s the photo mama had.

Willie Eason:

Dorie Miller, that’s the one I was singing, They Bombed Pearl Harbor about Dorie Miller. All that’s historical. Remember, he saved two battalions.

Robert Stone:

And you recorded that one, did you?

Willie Eason:

Yeah, “They Bombed Pearl Harbor,” “What a Time.”

Robert Stone:

And that was on Aladdin?

Willie Eason:

Wait a minute. Bombed Pearl Harbor, I believe, “Oh, What a Time,” since you just mentioned that, I believe that’s on the King and Queen.

Robert Stone:

King and Queen.

Willie Eason:

Where I sang “No Grumblers There,” could have been part one and part two, “Oh, What a Time.” I believe that’s what it is. I believe-

Robert Stone:

You don’t have any of these do you?

Willie Eason:

I did, but I don’t know how they got… They just got away. We’re talking going back 50-something years because I got back-

Robert Stone:

It’s a long time to hang on to a record.

Willie Eason:

And then they had give me a book of my songs I used to sing. I used to sell them books on the street. It cost me about 10 cents to make the book, but I would sell them for half a dollar.

Robert Stone:

The songs with the words.

Willie Eason:

The words, lyrics what I be singing, all that Roosevelt and They Bombed Pearl Harbor. I used to sing a little bit of a song about the Black, what you call it? Let’s see, something like a Black artist in the Black race. I sung a little bit of this about Black was… You’ve hard of Jessie Owens? I had brought him to- [singing] if you ever needed the lord before, you sure need him now. You ever needed the lord before, you sure need him now. You ever needed the lord before you sure need him now. You need him every day, every hour. If you’re Black like Joe Lewis with that dynamite right hand, knocked out bad Max Schmeling, send him back to the European land. Black was Jessie Owens, the greatest runner that ever lived. Hitler didn’t want to shake his hand, but he won the cup in Berlin. Remember when I- but I never recorded that one.

Robert Stone:

That’s too bad. How many songs do you think you’ve written?

Willie Eason:

Maybe about 12 or 15.

Robert Stone:

Did you copyright any of them? No?

Willie Eason:

A guy was telling me he was doing it, but he didn’t do it. You know how they tell, said, “Yeah, I’m going to do this for you, and I’m going to do that for you.”

Mike Stapleton:

The old cash register

Willie Eason:

That’s right, that’s right. The one I really believe I could have done something, I’m pretty sure I would have done something with Roosevelt.

Robert Stone:

Were you ever on any recordings where you were backing up somebody? Henry said he backed up Mahalia Jackson on one recording. Did you ever do any of that?

Willie Eason:

Only one. I think it was the Ward Singers.

Robert Stone:

The Clara Ward Singers?

Willie Eason:

Clara Ward Singers, I believe, I think I can remember that. I was in the background there just playing some of the music on there.

Robert Stone:

You don’t remember what numbers?

Willie Eason:

I don’t know what number she was singing. I don’t know what number the group was singing. They just wanted the Hawaiian in there.

Robert Stone:

Now, did you say in the East, or did you travel out West? I know like [crosstalk 00:40:49].

Willie Eason:

As far as where I traveled out through far as playing and singing, out through Texas, but I hung around Chicago. Hawaii, she the one had me over there, and I played in this big auditorium for all these different ministers. They have a certain time. The Catholic go in and have their service. You can play whatever you want and how loud ever you want to play it, but they got a whole system set up there. They can cut that guitar down and cut everything down for it to go. The amplification goes out over the audience the way they want it to go out. That’s right. That’s the first time I had seen that when I went over to Hawaii and seen that.

Robert Stone:

When were you in Hawaii?

Willie Eason:

She can tell you better because was stationed there.

Joeline Eason:

1980.

Robert Stone:

1980?

Willie Eason:

Yeah.

Robert Stone:

Did you mix it up with any of the Hawaiian guys there? Did you [crosstalk 00:41:40]?

Willie Eason:

No, I didn’t get a chance. I didn’t have my guitar over there. Yes, I did.

Joeline Eason:

You did.

Willie Eason:

I played in the auditorium. Yes, I did. I didn’t play with none of them. You threw me off when you said, “Did you play with any of them?” No, that’s when I got a chance to. See, they were playing these wooden guitars. I said, “Oh, my god.” And I know one lady, she had heard me from New Orleans. She was a Hawaiian. I said, “How could this lady?” Just like I’m talking about you, “How could this lady know me?” She said, “I seen you.” And she told me, she said, “I know I seen you.” And when she mentioned this Herman Brown, which was a promoter in New Orleans, then I knew she had been there. That’s right. Her being in Hawaii and she was a Hawaiian, “I wonder how in the world you got all the way over to New Orleans.”

Robert Stone:

How long have you been in St. Pete here?

Willie Eason:

This August coming will be seven years. This new year that’s coming will be seven years.

Robert Stone:

Do you play at church ever?

Willie Eason:

Once in a while. Once in a while I’ll play.

Robert Stone:

What church, any one in particular?

Willie Eason:

Not no particular one. Oh, only one I play in, I play in a little Pentecostal church up here on 18th Avenue. Sometimes I just play for them on Sunday, don’t have that many members or whatnot. They’re very nice, they’re open-hearted. I’ve just been there trying to help them out. I don’t play the Hawaiian guitar. I may play the organ or something like that.

Robert Stone:

You don’t play the steel when you play for them?

Willie Eason:

Once in a while. If they’ve got a special day, like on the fifth Sunday, they got a couple of other churches come in with them on fifth Sunday, then I’ll go there and I’ll play that day. But then if you was coming or something like that and you wanted to hear me play through the service, and I was going to play the guitar, well, I would let you know.

Robert Stone:

I think we’d like to do that. I might have mentioned this briefly, but as part of this project we’ve got a guy that’s got a, it’s basically a portable recording studio. It’s eight tracks, all digital, state-of-the-art. Where we can record a whole band and mix it down to where it’s just right.

Willie Eason:

Good. Well, you know what I was talking about when I was talking about how they done me. You can play loud or whatever you want to play, but they can cut you down in that room and make that sound whatever they want.

Robert Stone:

You balance it just right.

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Robert Stone:

It’s pretty expensive, and we just have a limited budget. So we need to be careful about how we use that. We’d really like to record you with whatever you like, bass and drums, whatever, in a church. We’d love to do that. One thing good about it, the recording engineer, he’s in Dade City, which is not far from here.

Willie Eason:

No, that’s right.

Robert Stone:

We could come over, basically, whenever you want. We’d have to schedule it and see-

Willie Eason:

Well, the best time… Excuse me, I don’t mean to cut you off. I’m sorry.

Robert Stone:

Whatever is good for you.

Willie Eason:

See, what it is, they’re having that special day, and I’m going to play the Hawaiian guitar. Not only that, I’ll be a little perked-up if I’m going to play the guitar.

Robert Stone:

You get a lot of energy.

Willie Eason:

Then you’ve got the organ, somebody is going to be at the organ like that.

Mike Stapleton:

And that’s on a fifth Sunday?

Willie Eason:

Well, generally, but every fifth Sunday, it may go to Apopka, wherever they… See what I mean? These two churches may go to Apopka, the next town, and the other churches will go up to this one. They switch it around like that. I’m trying to see what other times where you could catch me in a service. That’s the time when you really catch any of us, Henry Nelson, anybody. If they’re playing for the service, they put all kinds of things in there, whatever they’re going to do. With me, I can put chirps and runs. You’re playing, you’re sliding. Maybe you hit a few notes or something you don’t want to hear.

Robert Stone:

That’s where we’ve been recording. We’ve been all live at the service, at conventions, wherever.

Willie Eason:

That’s the best way. Like now, I have to make my own background and everything, getting the right tempo, perk myself up, get myself going, what they call soul, putting my soul in it and get all in it.

Robert Stone:

You’ve got to spread yourself out.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. You understand, well, you know what it’s all about. [Tape stops]

Robert Stone:

Date of birth?

Willie Eason:

Date birth is 26 of June 1921.

Robert Stone:

And that was in Georgia. Where did you say?

Willie Eason:

That’s in La Crosse County.

Robert Stone:

La Crosse County.

Willie Eason:

La Crosse, just like you said.

Mike Stapleton:

Which part of Georgia is that in?

Willie Eason:

Ellaville, Americus, about 14 miles out, don’t forget, Plains, Georgia where Carter is, is right in that area. All of it’s right in that same area, Americus, Ellaville, Plains, Georgia.

Robert Stone:

All right.

Willie Eason:

Yeah, boy, I’m telling you, I really enjoyed that day over in Hawaii, I’m telling you. That was really beautiful.

Robert Stone:

Speaking of Hawaii, I use this to show to people. This is something that the State of Hawaii did that’s going to be similar to what I’m going to do with this gospel project. In this it’s two cassettes. Ours will be just one, but it’ll be in a package like this with a booklet. The booklet’s got photographs and text. In this case, they transcribed the Hawaiian songs into English, the words and everything. We wouldn’t be doing that, a lot of historical stuff and the people. This is the kind of thing we’re talking about. It’d be similar to this with just one cassette.

Robert Stone:

Any of the artists that make it into the final product, we’d, of course, work out the arrangements. You get paid, plus you get a number of free cassettes, plus, the rest of them are going to be available too to churches or whoever else orders in quantity at a wholesale price. So, the idea is to get this back to the people from which it came, to the artists for free and for some honorarium money, and to the churches for cost, basically. So, we’re not out to make any money on this.

Robert Stone:

I have the guy from the Smithsonian that Henry Nelson and Aubrey are going to be on the radio, up at Wolf Track by Washington, DC. After we’re done with it, they may pick it up and put it on their label and do a national distribution, in which case, there’d be even more royalties. They’re excited about the project. A lot of people are real excited about this. It’s good music. And see, as you know, this music is not that well known outside of the House of God Church.

Joeline Eason:

That’s what I was telling him.

Robert Stone:

People that are in the business that I’m in are very excited about this because it’s something that’s good stuff, it’s exciting stuff, and, also, it’s not well known.

Joeline Eason:

It’s fresh to the public.

Robert Stone:

Also the timing is right too because there are still fellas that were pioneers that are still alive and well and playing, like yourself and like Henry Nelson. Some have passed already, Bishop Harrison and Troman.

Willie Eason:

That’s right.

Robert Stone:

But there’s still some around that have that connection that goes all the way back.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. That’s their.

Robert Stone:

We’re not any too soon on this thing.

Willie Eason:

You know what I only- well, I still can do it, though. I wish I had turned on the tape recording when I was doing them couple- You know who I got to send a tape for? He wanted to put it on the radio, just use it. I played for this fund raiser, and a guy down at Lakeland want me to… I charge to come down, I don’t know what they’re putting on to be on that program. So I said, “Well, I’ve got to get my…” Because I get rusty when I don’t play too much. If you tell somebody and say, “I’m losing it,” because you’re not in practice. You’re not rehearsing, you know what I mean? It eases away. But you tell some people that, they don’t want to believe that.

Robert Stone:

That’s right.

Willie Eason:

They just- you should still be able to do everything… Uh-huh (negative).

Robert Stone:

That’s right.

Willie Eason:

But the more I play, it comes back.

Robert Stone:

Comes back fast too.

Willie Eason:

I noticed this morning even when I went to try to play a couple of numbers, they told me, they figured I was going to get hoarse quick. Now, the hoarseness don’t bother me if I’m doing it constantly. If I’m doing it constantly, then that don’t bother me too much. My real voice will come back and everything. I’m really accurate. But then like they said, then I see myself, I get hoarse. And it’s different climates. I don’t know whether you know this or not, I can sing here in Florida, but I can sing easier with the Pennsylvania air. I used to do outdoor singing. And I could fight that. I could fight Chicago. Chicago, coming off of Lake Michigan, you’ve got that air coming off of Lake Michigan. I couldn’t hardly-

Mike Stapleton:

Real humid.

Willie Eason:

It was hard fighting that. So I could tell. In Florida, if I don’t sing too constantly, I notice the change. But when I get my real good voice back, I be so glad when I get back around Philadelphia and New York. I become more clearer with my words. That’s the reason I try to make my words very distinct because, even on a recording, they want the words very distinct, whatever English you can put on there, the words, I guess so the people can understand what you’re saying.

Joeline Eason:

Did you say this is through a grant through the state?

Robert Stone:

Well, see, I work for the state. And we have enough money to kind of barely keep things going. When we do a project like this, we need additional funding. The state puts in some, and the balance of the funding, we’ve gotten this from the National Endowment for The Arts. They have a folk arts program. And the folk arts, this thing is from the other in that… Basically, I guess if you simplified it as much as you could, the folk art stuff applies to things that, basically, you don’t learn in school. And music would be the case of music that’s, largely, unwritten, sung by ear. You teach. You learn from this guy. Maybe he never even taught you, but you listened to him and then you figured it out.

Willie Eason:

That’s right. That’s it.

Robert Stone:

That kind of thing, as opposed to going and taking piano lessons-

Willie Eason:

See, I ain’t never took no music. I ain’t never took no music.

Robert Stone:

How about the piano? You never-

Willie Eason:

I ain’t never took no music. It’s just- That’s the reason I have to laugh at you because you tell me what- I picked mine up. I started playing with one finger when I was, what, five or six years old? “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” I used to play it with the pump organ where you pump your feet. That’s where I started. I thought I would never play with my left hand. The left hand is always, you just sit here and play one finger. And I’ve got people now. Of course, I never taught too much piano, but I taught some of them, and they want to [inaudible 00:53:56]. You have to have a lot of patience. You know what I mean? And if you got engagements to fulfill and different things like that, and I have other project. I’ve got a family. You know what I mean?

Robert Stone:

Sure.

Willie Eason:

You’re fulfilling all these things, something’s got to be left or something got to go undone or something ain’t going to be right trying to put all this stuff together. Now at my age now, I try to stay as active as I can. I want to live as long as I can.

Mike Stapleton:

That’s it. Name of the game.

Willie Eason:

I want to live as long as I can.

Robert Stone:

You’ve got a lot of energy.

Willie Eason:

Huh?

Robert Stone:

You’ve got a lot of energy.

Willie Eason:

Thank you. Well, I tell you, the doctors lucky they got me up on that operating table with two operations here in the last year or so, about 18 months or two years. And I had asked that doctor, the prostate, and now I found out I didn’t need the prostate because now they got a way that they can, with the laser and something else and with the system they got now you don’t even need it. Because me, I even took her with me. That’s why you see me hand her the paper and everything. Am I reading this clearly? Do I have a second opinion? And, believe it or not, I even took her over to the doctor with me. I wanted her to hear these medical terms that you was dictating to me and telling me why. I’m not painful, I don’t have no pain, no hurting. I’m still active. I get out there and I do my gardening. I don’t need no cane. I didn’t have no cane.

Willie Eason:

But here, after the operation, here I couldn’t even use the pot. I had to use the pot in the bed, and I wasn’t used to that. And here I’m finding myself, I’m in a wheelchair. I’ve got to take therapy. I wasn’t used to this. But I fought my way back. Then I’m here, I’ve got a walker. Walkin’ with a walker. I wasn’t used to this. But I didn’t want no doctor to touch me, not no cutting. I just had to be cut. She could tell you. She went with me.

Willie Eason:

I asked that doctor just time I found out that me and him went to the same school in Philadelphia. Me and him got to talking and I said, “I noticed your credentials.” I said, “Doc,” I said… What this other borough in New York? Staten Island. I remember one of his credentials read Staten Island. I said, “You went to a school in Staten Island?” He says, “Yeah.” I said, “Yeah.” I said, “Well, you up around my way.” He said, “What you call around your way?” I said, “I went to school, I went to a school in Philadelphia on Broad Street.” I said, “I went to a school on Broad Street.” I said, “You went to Central High?” I said, “Well, they renamed it.” I said, “It’s Benjamin Franklin.” I said, “We both went to the same school.” Isn’t that a coincidence?

Robert Stone:

Yeah.

Willie Eason:

But he’s in his 50s, and here I am in my 70s. So, I know we couldn’t have had the same teachers. We didn’t have the same teachers because they changed the name altogether. The same doctor. Today, I don’t have to tell you, a lot of doctors in the whole world think they’re after-