Memphis Gold's Story Part 2

Memphis Gold at JV's (Annandale VA)
mid 1990s. 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 left our questions out.  This is the second 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.

Church was pretty much my first recollection of music. My grandfather and father were musicians. My father had twelve sisters and brothers who played steel guitars and other things. They had the Chandler Band out of Bells Tennessee. They used to get their instruments at the general store. What was so great about that is my father said he used to be able to go in there and get anything he wants on his father’s name. “Oh, you’re Dan Chandler’s boy. Get what you want.” So they would get mandolins, violins and all these instruments of the day. I heard my older uncles and aunts play piano. They (the Chandler Band) played music that was a little rag-timish. The Tennessee string band music they used to play was not like the Mississippi music. Maybe like the jug band music, maybe like Gus Cannon. My dad said he knew Yank Rachell and others who played around Tennessee.

Memphis Gold's father on piano and others in Church.
Photo © Memphis Gold

They used a lot of open tunings (on their stringed instruments) like Robert Wilkins. I did too. I started playing a lot in open tuning, E tuning (tuned to an E chord). My father played in the family band and a lot at church.

Once a year, the people from the Church of God in Christ in other cities would converge in Memphis for 30 days - even people from the other chapter in California. Preachers and musicians would go 24 hours a day for a month. I went to school in the day and every night at ten o’clock, that’s when Rev Utah Smith came. That was his time. He would come in with wings, two wings, with the Sisters behind him. (Starts singing) “Two Wings … heaven gonna be my home.” Two Wings is the Gospel Tune I used to hear.

Cover of Lynn Abbott's book-cd of legendary
evangelist and guitarist Elder Utah Smith

Rosetta Tharpe and the Mattie Moss Clark Sisters would come in. Mattie Moss Clarke was a young woman at the time but that’s how the The Clark Sisters started out of Detroit. They had a piano for her (at the church). Sometimes she would play and sometimes my dad would play for her. My dad liked to play the Fender bass though; that was his main instrument. He liked the stand-up bass and he played a lot like Willie Dixon. He always had his own bass and took it home after church – it was all nicked up. 

Anytime I wanted to play it in church, they would put me up on a stool, and I could stand up and hit those strings “boom boom boom boom…” and keep the time.

I don’t think my father played anywhere but in the church. I think because he had a great conversion after losing one of his children. I could hear the influence even in his piano playing. They called ‘em templing (?) keys, a little ragtime type feel.

At home, I would listen to the gospel hour on WDIA early in the morning. As the day progressed, they started playing BB King’s music and all the secular music. I heard Honeymoon Garner and Rufus (Thomas) as DJs. We could catch Randy out of Nashville too (Randy out of Nashville really means We could catch WLAC out of Nashville too. WLAC had programs by John R and others sponsored by Randy's Records of Gallatin, TN). When the Beatles came out (I was about eight) my young friends and I would sing “She Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah.” A lot of my brothers and sisters were too old. 

Eight of us siblings are still alive, eight out of fourteen. My oldest sister is 84, she is the oldest of the fourteen. Four boys and four girls are left.

My father was making his living as a tree surgeon. My mother was a house maid and house wife. She worked for a lot of rich white people. I used to get a lot of passed down clothes and shoes. I can remember when I would have to go to school with cardboard in my shoes (covering) where I wore out a big hole. Some of the kids mother’s then, in the 60’s, were getting to be teachers. Black folks were getting to be a little more educated in my town. My parents were getting to be so old though that I didn’t know anything else. I burned wood, I went to the woodshed. I burned coal. I didn’t know anything else; I was an old soul. 

There was a park in front of my house that was over 200 yards long and 60 or 70 yards wide. The police would come by in old Mayberry cars and throw us out. The white kids would say to us “come on over and play football with us.” We’d get over there and start playing and all of a sudden the police were kicking us out. The park was just across the street but when you crossed the street in our neighborhood, that was the white side. The other side was Orange Mound. Orange Mound, where I come from, is one of the oldest black communities in the United States where people owned their homes.

I would get kicked out of the park and then the rock (or brick?) throwing started. When I was a kid, we would do some devilish stuff. The cops would come by, this is around ‘65 or ’66, and we would throw rocks. We would knock the cops off their motorcycles. It was getting crazy you know?

I was an average student and had a lot of general street knowledge and old sense. When I was ten, my father was 60 and his friends like Robert Wilkins were 70s or 80s. I graduated 12th grade and went to church so much that I used to tell myself that when I ever grow up, I’m never going to church again. When church would start, they would literally be praising god until 1 or 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. I would go to the last bleacher and go to sleep. Many nights, they would close the church up with everyone wondering where I’m at. I’m up under the last bleacher. One night they had a funeral. At that time they used to leave the body overnight in the church with two little bulbs, light they would leave on over the casket. I woke up and saw this casket with the lights and went (racing) to the front door. I was always hiding out and nobody would find me.

My father showed me church music. It was Dan Norman, Robert Balfour’s brother-in-law, who starting showing me stuff like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. He had to have played with Muddy because the stuff that he played; I knew that they had to have some type of connection. My mother would say “Dan, don’t be showing that boy all that devil music.” She never wanted me to play blues but I was picking up little boogie tunes you know. Dan Norman (who was showing me) was born 1917. My father was older than him, he was born 1905. Norman and Muddy were about the same age, both born in 1917. That’s my earliest guitar playing. Every morning he would come to work with my father because he was my father’s ground man. Early morning about 6 o’clock or something, before I would go to school, he would pick a guitar or I would play a little something. He had a guitar that he would bring to my house but my father finally bought me a guitar down on Beale Street where there was Nathan’s Pawn Shop. The first guitar I got might have been from$75 to 90 dollars when I was about six.

Addendum: My memory may be failing me as I thought we discussed the Church more, but maybe it was Memphis and me talking before Joe came with the tape recorder. Anyway Memphis himself responded to an email, ""Yes Utah was a great influence on my playing! I used to sit under him and my father at the Holy convocation each year along and play for Sister Arizona Dranes in the early sixties! I was about 6/7 playing mandolin myself and guitar! I would spend a whole Month playing as the convocation then went 30 days! every nite around ten o'clock he would start two wings and the Saints would shout until late in to the nite! I loved going with my father, even though I would have to go to school the next day! I would see sister Rosetta Tharpe come and play also, She would have Mason Temple jumping!"

(To be continued)