Memphis Gold's Story Part 5

Memphis Gold and Deborah Coleman
Photo © Memphis Gold

In August 2009, Joe Kessler and I had a chance to interview Chester Chandler, the blues performer known as Memphis Gold for the Dutch publication Block. This interview was translated into Dutch for publication, but we have felt it would be helpful to have the interview in English. Joe transcribed it and leftThis is the fourth of several parts that will be running the next few days. I should point out that interviews with Memphis Gold have appeared in Jefferson Blues, Blues & Rhythm and Living Blues.

I assumed the name “K.D.” when I got there. When I got there I had to have a name, so I was “Little K.D. King”. Everybody wanted to come in and play with me. They’d put their name on the list and ask to play with me. I was playing lead then and kicking butt. William Goldman and O.C. Nunn out of Chicago would come in. William Goldman recruited me to play at the DC Blues Society’s first Blues competition. 

I finally got a place to stay in a prestigious neighborhood near Nebraska Avenue. The guy let me stay in his basement, an Italian guy. And he would let me keep his properties up, keeping them real nice. So I had a place to stay until I met Barbara (my wife) in late ’93-94 and I moved in with her.

The week I met Barbara, I had already contracted out with Deborah Coleman and Willie Hicks. It was me, Willie Hicks, Deborah Coleman, and a guy named Slam. She said she needed a rhythm guitar player. I met her at India Gate in Adams Morgan (DC). She came to see me play that night. It was me, Willie, and a drummer, Morris. We were a three piece and we used to pack the India Gate, man. We went down to Walnut Creek down in North Carolina. That’s the first time I saw Roy Roberts, I got a chance to play with him, and also I got a chance to play with Bob Margolin. Deborah was opening up for Bob. She met this guy, Keith Federman who became her manager. He didn’t like me. When I opened up, I was killer. I’m walkin all through the crowd, doin my thing, I opened up for Deborah for at least 30 minutes, so I’m outshining her, you know. He didn’t like that. He fired me. I was with Deborah for about a year.

Then I met Charlie Sayles when I went down to Manute Bol’s to jam one night. Charlie said he’d heard of me but never met me, and that everybody used to tell him he needs to get with this guy, K.D. At time, Charlie was sleeping in front of Central Union Mission. I invited him to my house where he spent the night. It just so happened that the next day I was going to the studio to make a little demo. It was me, O.C., and Charlie. From then on, me and Charlie started playing together. It was Barbara’s idea that it was time for me to start doing my own thing, so I started doing my own thing.

Then we started playing at Whitlow’s, J.V.’s, Smokehouse Blues in Centreville. Charlie had me play with him at Fleetwood’s (Mic Fleetwood’s club in Alexandria VA). One day, Barbara’s attorney found a guy from AFE (Armed Forces Entertainment), so then I started getting on the USO tours. Then everything was starting to roll real good. I had regular gigs all the time. I was the first guy to play at Whitlow’s. We were like the house band.

When I started on the USO tours, I was trying to get out of the clubs ‘cuz Barbara’s always had a good business sense and she said if you want to get bigger than what you are now, you gotta get out of the clubs. Then I started playing up at the casinos, like Trump Plaza, with this guy called Greek Horn (?). He said Memphis, if you’re going to get a Marquee value, you’re gonna have to get out of these small places. Since then I’ve played some clubs, but mostly I’ve been kind of silent, but steady going.

I started my first recording in 1997 and finished it in 1998. It was called Memphis Gold. Bobby Parker helped me produce it. I funded it myself. I was working cutting trees down. By this time, I started getting my own little tree company, too. I started climbing. I was climbing everyday and working in Vienna and Great Falls, making chunks and chunks of money. Times were good.

I learned quite a lot from Bobby doing my first album. Bobby didn’t want to give his total 100% to it because he was “one of the premiere blues guys around” and Bobby didn’t want nobody to outshine him, but he did help me with it and I paid him. I learned about mixing, recording, I learned how to do what Bobby said, make it big and fat. I learned what to do to bring over to my next CD which was Prodigal Son.

Memphis Gold at Pocono Blues Festival
Photo © Ron Weinstock

I played the Poconos in 2004, after I sent a demo to Michael Cloeren. When I played it, I was getting other people to try and learn my music, and nobody really wanted to rehearse, so to me, I thought it wasn’t a very good gig. Ralph Oliver was with me at that time, and he and his old lady had just had a big blowout. That just sent him out to the left field. We were on stage trying to grapple to get our shit together, because if you’re gonna do something, the Poconos is the place to do it, and I feel like I didn’t do as well as I could have done. From that day ‘till now, I feel like it was because of that mishap with him.

I enjoyed it, though. Just to be at the Poconos and carry on and play my guitar and have everybody taking pictures. It was a half a year later that the Prodigal Son CD came out. I feel like I was always a step behind. Even the CD I have out now, I was rushing it, I think I could have done a better job. By Prodigal Son, I was trying to show people that I am the real guy, I am the real deal. I wanted to show Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones that I’m the prodigal son, ‘cause I’m the guy who played with Robert Wilkins, the guy whose song you covered on Beggar’s Banquet. I was also trying to prove a point to myself.

I’m the prodigal son. I’m the one who left home, was homeless, and I was joining all this together as being the prodigal son.

I don’t know why I paid off my parents’ house, everybody in my family was begging. My sisters and brothers, too, none of them to this day can remember a dime I gave them. I had about $22,000 dollars. I was paying the light bills and everything, with a smile. I always smile. Every time you see me, normally, I’m the same person. My family was taking advantage of me at that time.


(To be continued)

Memphis Gold's Story Part 4

Charlie Sayles, Shawn Kellerman, Jordan Patterson, Gold at Fleetwood's 1996.
Photo © Ron Weinstock

In August 2009, Joe Kessler and I had a chance to interview Chester Chandler, the blues performer known as Memphis Gold for the Dutch publication Block. This interview was translated into Dutch for publication, but we have felt it would be helpful to have the interview in English. Joe transcribed it and leftThis is the fourth of several parts that will be running the next few days. I should point out that interviews with Memphis Gold have appeared in Jefferson Blues, Blues & Rhythm and Living Blues.


When I came back to Memphis, I started working on the river. I was doing revetment work. I was going on the Mississippi River taking big chunks of land out and sinking mats down with concrete, with wire in them. I was a pretty smart black guy, and the offices were run by the white guys. The white guys were in the office and the black guys were doing all the hard labor - from Friar’s Point, down on 49, the crossroads. All these guys were coming from Memphis and Mississippi to work on the river. I was what they used to call a voucher examiner. I was kind of smart and made E-6 (in the navy). They hired me. Guys would stay out 30 days at a time and I’d figure up where they’d stay for a month in the hotel and send it back to Memphis on a government voucher. They’d get paid 30 days and get paid enough money to go out for 30 more days.

I’d go from Cairo, IL all the way down to Gretna, LA. Some of the guys would go down on a boat, I drove down in a van with the office personnel. We’d go down this long highway 61 with so much fog, really foggy, one time I was driving and ran up on two little lights. I was panicking, and it was two little white old ladies, who had a head on incident with a guy who was drunk in a truck. And the motor had pinned these ladies. They were like a pancake. So the guy had a truckload of beer, and the top of his head was cut, a big chunk was cut out.
We’d drive down and stay in hotels for 30 days. Then we’d go on to Clarksdale, then on to Greenville, then to Yazoo. I was steadily going down in Mississippi, and I’m looking for Juke joints down there too. I’m looking at all these guys and starting to get my blues thing on. I got me a guitar, out of the pawn shop, an electric, and amp. I started playing, again. If you went into a Juke joint, and you could play guitar, you were the shit. And I could pull a girl every night and take her back to my hotel room. I was playing a lot of Jimmy Reed stuff. “Oh baby, you don’t have to go…” 

I’d get into a long groove, maybe John Lee Hooker stuff. Straight ahead stuff. And then I finally ran into a guy who was doing a lot of Howlin’ Wolf stuff. He called himself “Little Howlin’ Wolf”. And I thought “Man, this guy is rollin!” To me, Howlin’ Wolf is the very best I’ve ever heard of blues guys. When it comes to Howlin’ Wolf, this guy put everything into it. So I started to get into a little Howlin’ Wolf stuff. And I started to build a little confidence and started singing, because if you didn’t sing, you were just laying back playing. When I started playing with the Fieldstones, man, those guys wouldn’t let me sing or do nothing. All I could do was play rhythm. 

When I got back to Memphis, I started playing all over Memphis. That was for about 3 years. Around 84, I was playing regularly with the Fieldstones, Ben Wilson and the Hollywood All-stars, with Uncle Ben in the park, with Earl the Pearl.

When I was 14 or 15, I used to play with Big Lucky Carter. He was living in Orange Mound at the time, I used to sit on the front porch with him, he was playing different stuff and I really got a lot from Big Lucky. He showed me a lot of chords. Memphis sat in with Big Lucky when Carter was among the featured Memphis blues acts at a 1997 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Big Lucky sat in with Memphis at his regular gig at Whitlow's at the time). 

I was playing for tips out in the park. Then, all of a sudden, I became one of them main stage guys. It happened so fast. People from overseas were coming to find some blues and I was playing with the JJ Blues Band. After playing with the Fieldstones, I started to get my own little thing together with these other guys: Little Howlin’ Wolf, a guy named John Moore, and so we started playing in the park. David Evans, Evelyn Young (sax player), and my sweetheart, Jesse Mae Hemphill. We were playing in the park. Jesse Mae was playing with bells on her feet and a big cowboy hat on, and have chewing tobacco in her mouth and she’d kiss me, and whoa no! Then David started giving me little gigs and stuff and I was following them around, the older cats, like Little Apple White, Wilroy Sanders and Wordy B. Perkins. Little Apple White was a good singer. I started watching him sing, that’s when I started singing. “If I don’t start singing, man, I’m just gonna be a rhythm guitar player.”

How I really made my mark with these groups is when I got a wireless. They didn’t know anything about a wireless. So I could step out in the crowd, and pick with my teeth, and behind my head.

At that time I had a little bit of money because I had started working at the Humko Oil Company and at the post office part time. I was different from everybody because I used to wear a suit and tie into the Juke joints. I had to do this because the only time you could go out on the river was in the late fall.

Memphis Gold at Church in Memphis
Photo © Memphis Gold

After a while, I was getting kind of sick of Memphis. It was getting commercial, and white guys were getting all the (music) jobs. They were kicking us out. Beale Street was changing. They were coming back to the Elvis Presley thing, rockabilly. And then I was tired. I’m the type of person that stays at a place only so long, and is kind of worldly. I’ve always been a world traveler. I was the only one of my father’s kids who would take off and go where they wouldn’t see me for a long time. I was the prodigal son.

I left Memphis in 1991. I drew all my retirement down from the government, and I paid my parent’s house off. And I had $100 and a 1 way bus ticket and said, “Where am I going?” And I came to DC, arrived to stay at the Central Union mission on a Friday. They put me on lockdown. They said if you’re gonna stay here, you have to stay here for the whole weekend, and be indoctrinated, and you have to stay until Monday morning. I started keeping my clothes at the bus station. Everyday I would go to the bus station and change so I wouldn’t look homeless. I walked around until my $100 ran out, and then I started to pan-handle a little bit, but I said this ain’t me. The heck with this. So I went up in Tenlytown (DC). I put an application in at Hechinger’s (hardware) and I got the job, but I was still homeless. I was going back to the shelter every night.

Then things got a little better for me and I started working for United Methodist Church near New York Avenue, doing custodial work. They started letting me stay at church and gave me the keys. They trusted me so much. I was a southern boy and had a southern aire about me. I saved up and got a lawn mower from Hechinger’s. I got my own customers, cutting lawns and landscaping. I didn’t have a car, and would walk miles from Maryland into DC with my lawn mower. I started making some money, and one day went to a pawn shop at 14th and P, and saw a Stratocaster that was $600. “Aww man, I had $50 in my pocket.” I put it in layaway. And I worked 4 or 5 months or so, real real hard, until I got that Stratocaster.

Then I walked around the corner to the Vegas Lounge. Big Foot Emmitt Cottrell was on drums. Tony or Gale on bass. Willie Hicks would be there sometimes. I would sit in with them on an open jam, and they said, “Man! Where did you come from?” I said I’m from Memphis on Beale Street, and jet said, “I gotta have you, man!” Jet started paying me $40 on the weekends. Bobby Parker would come in every now and then, and also Phil Flower Sr. I got to play with him.

Memphis Gold and Ron Weinstock
Photo courtesy Ron Weinstock

(To be continued)