Blues With a Feeling
New book from blues impresario Dick Waterman sounds the right note
Managers seldom make headlines unless they’re caught cheating their clients or ruthlessly ruling a musician’s empire, à la Col. Tom Parker. Dick Waterman is the exception. He’s spent a lifetime in management and promotion mainly due to a love of music and burning desire to see great, neglected artists achieve some measure of social stature and fiscal justice.
Though he started as a writer with Broadside magazine, Waterman diverged from that path for good in 1964 after he, Nick Perls and Phil Spiro discovered Son House living in Rochester, N.Y. Waterman subsequently formed Avalon Productions and became an advocate, confidant, archivist and photographer for heralded artists like Skip James, Mance Lipscomb, Buddy Guy, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup and Mississippi John Hurt, among numerous others. Waterman also became a close friend and, later, manager of Bonnie Raitt, who was then working in obscurity.
Because he’s always avoided the limelight, only Waterman’s closest friends and associates know the intimate details of his business relationships. Thankfully, that’s now changed with the release of the new book Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive (Thunder’s Mouth Press). The volume wasn’t published in time for 2003’s “Year of the Blues,” but it’s just the sort of invaluable, entertaining work that was sorely needed during those at times insufferable festivities.
Waterman avoids sociopolitical treatises and anthropological polemics about the musical links between West African folk songs and blues lyrics. He’s more concerned with showing readers the people behind the music, revealing their likes and dislikes, their personal strengths and shortcomings. Waterman has always dealt openly with people, and he’s never shied away from the issue of race. He wasn’t naive enough, for example, to think that being a white man in a black world, he wouldn’t be noticed. Yet Waterman never let possible racial misunderstandings prevent him from questioning actions he felt were wrong, and he didn’t let close friendships with musicians keep him from working vigorously on their behalf.
Between Midnight and Day contains countless stories and vivid photos, but Waterman hasn’t merely crafted a feel-good account. He includes details of crude and unflattering behavior by icons like Bob Dylan and Big Mama Thornton alongside fond remembrances of Junior Wells, Bobby “Blue” Bland, B.B. King, Robert Pete Williams and Taj Mahal. Personal favorites among these accounts include Eric Clapton freezing in his tracks at the offices of Vanguard Records after hearing that Skip James wanted to meet him, as well as the night Muddy Waters thanked Waterman for upbraiding a younger musician following a pathetic performance. Then there’s Son House’s toast to Robert Johnson after he’d had enough of John Hammond’s effusive praise for the deceased legend. “Here’s to Robert Johnson,” House said, “for being dead.”
You won’t find that kind of wit or candor in most blues histories, encyclopedias or journals—or, for that matter, in music books of any kind.
—Ron Wynn
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