EDDIE CUSIC - LITTLE MILTON WILL TELL YOU 'BOUT HIM

EDDIE CUSIC
LITTLE MILTON WILL TELL YOU 'BOUT HIM

The Blues in its approximately 100 years has been a music found in the back woods as well as the big city. While it's true that it is a music about the facts of life, as the late Willie Dixon might say, it is also a music that is primarily anchored in the communities of its performances and audiences. While many performers would leave their home communities and become celebrities in a region of the country, others played for family and friends, or abandoned musical careers for the purpose of raising a family and earning a solid living. One of those who chose the latter route was Eddie Cusic, a Mississippi bluesmen whose career leading a band was interrupted by the military draft. After time in the armed services, he settled down until after retirement when he resumed playing the blues. I met Eddie Cusic at the Festival of American Folk Life in 1991 when he was one of the artists who participated in The Roots of Rhythm and Blues,The Robert Johnson Era.  Eddie Cusic is a traditionally based delta blues artist whose vigorous interpretations of Catfish Blues and Women in My Life were first-rate. I had the opportunity to speak with him and he told me his story.

Eddie Cusic is from Leland, Mississippi. He was born January 4, 1926 "just down the road from Leland on a plantation called Willman, Willman, Willman, Mississippi." Leland is near Greensville. "I would say about 7 miles from Greensville." The nearest big city is Jackson, the state capital, which is "About a hundred or a hundred twenty-five miles from Leland." Leland is in the "central part in the delta, lowlands, no hills." When l asked, "Hot muggy summers?," he agreed.

Eddie recalled that his parents had come from "Yulah, Alabama, so they told me and that's where they lived down there. Willman Plantation. That's where they raise cotton and corn you know, in other words farm country, you know; and so I was born and raised down there ... and then we moved to Hollyknow Plantation which is a big farm." Eddie was about 7, 8, or 9 when they moved. "So we lived there and I got big enough and all I know was farm. I got big enough to help out with the farm. We raised cotton on a half. They furnished you six months. If you got anything (Left over? Yeah!) If you had anything left over, most times you didn't. And when they settle with  you they'd say, 'Well, you came out of debt. What you gonna need?' That's always 'what you gonna need.' Never give you anything if you a profit. Say you come out of go out to those places, slip out. You call them country work, you wouldn't have nothing. Yeah so we stayed debt. If you didn't pick cotton by the hundred or do day there awhile and then we moved out..." Eddie remembers moving to a "black fellow's place called George Hood. Moved out there and that's where I got up a young sound out there."

"Going on around about 15 or 16 years old, I used to go out to this hose places, slip out. You call this hem country jukes, You know what I mean, out in the country, way out in the country. And the people used to leave town to go to the country to have fun, I reckon. The regular law enforcement was so rough on those people; and if they catch you uptown, they'd say 'Hey boy. Where you. where you live.' [In falsetto] 'On Mr. So and So's Place. "You better get your ass outta town, go on back there' So they would make to those country joints." The country joints would be open on weekends.

"I used to go around those places and the guys would be playing them guitars. You know what I mean." Eddie remembered Jed Sawyer and his sister Fanny Sawyer playing . "She played the mandolin, he played the guitar. Oh they used to have a fine sound. I couldn't play anything then." There were no musicians in Eddie's family. So he learned on his own. "I had to start putting a string upside the wall. You understand what I mean, one string up the wall." He described where he got the wire. "Used to bale hay, used to get the bale, hay wire and get me a piece and put it upside the wall and put a bottle on it, pile a brick or something on top of it at the bottom, and then I take any kind of bottle, used a slide, you know what I mean, that's the way ! make music.A little wire, a little piece of wire sticker or so to keep from hurting my hand or finger.

 Eddie Cusic playing "Cut You Loose" from 1979-1980 field recordings.

"Then I played that awhile and after then I said I seemed to think that wire didn't have enough ring in it. So they had them old switch brooms years ago. They had them old switch brooms. They had a knot with wire tying straws together. I got me a piece of my mothers broom, and I put that up there - - put the wire still upside the wall, between two nails. That sounded a little better. And every place I played, you could tell where I played at. Any house in the country I played, there was one of the wires there. Me and my little friends had a ball. So after then, I must have got pretty good because some of them old guys said, 'Boy, why don't you get you a little guitar.' Went and got a little old ukelele. Got a little ukelele with cat gut strings on. That didn't sound too good to me. So I got old enough and ordered me a Gene Autry guitar out of the Walter Field catalog. Got me a Gene Autry quitar. Mailman brought it out the country on the route, I forget which route, it has been so long, and my mother, she said, 'Boy I don't want you to play no guitar. If you gonna play, play spirituals.' Always though it was best to be on one side of the fence; not straddle the fence. I'd rather the blues. So l got that guitar, and I put it up and I gọt it and used to try to play it, and my fingers got sore. I'd pick it up and l'd put it down." Asked about the first music he tried to play, he said it was so long ago. He did remember going to church and singing in the choir. However he says, 'I still prefer the blues.'

Asked the first time he saw blues, Eddie replied, "Well I couldn't 'call the name of some of them. But some of them were way back with 'Little School Girl," 'Rolling Stone', that's by Muddy Waters, 'Catfish', and all that and, oh, a lot of way back songs, lot of them I done forgot." He started playing the weekend parties. Asked about the first songs he played, Eddie responded, "Well.Really, I going to tell you the truth. It been so long I can't remember. But I know 'Little School Girl,' 'Catfish', and all that."

Eddle's family had a record player, "one of kind where you wind up. ...Yeah, you wind up when it run down I could copy it. They had  hose kind. I didn't know anything about learning no songs from nobody back then, way back Eddie's family had a record player, "one of the old kind where you wind up. ...Yeah, you wind up, when it run down I could copy it. They had one of those kind. I didn't know anything about learning no songs from nobody back then, way back then because we were not able to buy the record, see what I mean and when you get a record, mostly would be church records, you know, and all that and I just went on."

"...I went on and put that down and the guy says, 'Man you sound pretty good. Say why don't you get a big guitar." I got a big guitar, never will forget. Got it from Tatum Music Company in Greensville and it was a Gibson, I think. I played it round and they said, You sound better if you get an amplifier and a guitar and get a guitar." This was back in the 40s and early 50s.

"In the 50s, that's when I got me a little band. I met this Little Milton Campbell who's putting out records they tell me now. I taught him how to play. Years ago. And anywhere you see him, ask him if he knows Eddie Cusic. He would tell you he would, he do." He remembers how he met Little Milton. "I used to be out in the country practicing on my guitar and he strayed across the creek over there. He could always sing; you could hear him always sing, and he'd come and start hanging around with me. He had a guitar, but he couldn't play it. So I used to take his fingers on the chords and what not, showed him and he could tell you himself and that's what I did. So I taught him and learned himself. Usually that's the best, and then when you learn something, they beat you doIng it (laughs) that's pretty good. I went into the service.When I came out, he had made some records, so that's how it was.

And so I had one a little band, got my group together there and in 52, the army drafted me so the group broke up, you know." Eddie's band included "Roosevelt Myers. he's the drummer, he's in California now. ...James McGary, he's out in the country now, he do farm work, he quit playing. And I, just myself, 3 of us. There's another guy I used to have. He followed me around, he named Jim O'Neil. He used to play drums, play guitar, now he's a preacher in my home town." He recalled listening to records and the radio at the time, and "get different sounds and try to imitate them. ...l really liked Muddy Waters, yeah, Little Walter, course he passed. Whole some like that." He remembered King Biscuit Time. " He also wrote some of his own songs. "I don't know music. I play by ear and sound. I play by ear. And I know when its not right and I know a few chords. ...l can tune a guitar before I read music lessons. I never did learn that. I play by ear. They tell me the best kind to play by ear. That's what they tell me."

Drafted in 1952, he served in the army until 1954. "Did my training, went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina and I got my training in Fort Eustice, Virginia, right here. Then I got in the army. I was a handy man ... They have a motor pool, transportation company. 53rd Trucking Company, transportation core, and I did so well at different things, they put me in special services. Stayed there awhile, and then they asked me if I wanted to go overseas. I told them I didn't think I did so well." He was then told he wouldn't be sent overseas. "When we ship you out, you going to California. That's where you get your discharge."

After getting discharged in California, Eddie returned home. "Coming back home, I decided I want to play a little bit again. So I bought me some little instruments, got some guys back together, played awhile went down to Florida,went down there way down, pretty good." For a while, things went fine. At some point the group "wasn't doing right, so we got unorganized. So I left them and I come back. So I went to Stoneville, Mississippi, USDA, Delta Branch Experiment Station. There I worked for 23 years. Have my army time added to that for retirement and so I retired in '88." He explained why he stopped playing music, “So I wasn't get paid for what I was doing, so I thought, really wasn't cause there wasn't enough for each. When you're in town and got a job and not meeting your obligation you have to cut it loose. So I could have got with a record company or something like that, but I didn't now, so I worked on this job and I retired in '88, so I finally stopped playing." After retirement, he started fooling around again and started playing at some of the festivals around home and "found I could make a little money. I decided to go back, so that's it."

Eddie recalls playing a lot of tunes, although he doesn't remember many songs he once played. "When I leave here, I don't be study playing, I be doing something else. Naturally, if you are not as really into something, nothing but that, you understand that, that don't make you as well or do as well as you are interested."Really, I'm not too interested to it. I enjoy myself and get around and reason I like blues somebody else plays, that  will make me want to play. If I was around this all the time, I would be really good."

I asked him if played around house parties around home. "I don't do too much around my home. Others playing. Son Thomas 'bout the only one in the area now and he's sick you know." He has four children. One son, Dale, plays drums and was playing behind rhythm and blues singer Mamie Davis at the Festival of Folk Life. (Lonnie Pitchford played lead guitar in that band for the festival.) While Dale can play a little guitar, he really is a drummer, and playing as much southern funk as blues. Another son, Tracy plays guitar, "[h]e likes that bebop. Must learn him what I know." He indicated an interest in recording as long as "I'd get a little something, you know I wouldn't mind. Get something out of it." 

 While I only heard him perform about five or six different songs over the course of two weeks, that reflected the format of the Festival of Folklife. There was nothing fancy about his renditions of Catfish Blues or Women in My Life.He delivered them in a strong delta manner, with strong vocals and taut instrumental backing. Having given up music for a long period of time, he may not have a large repertoire, but his showcase songs are wonderfully delivered and certainly it would be nice to have some available recordings by him.

This article appeared originally in the Spring 1994 issue of the National Capital Blues Quarterly, a short-lived publication of the DC Blues Society. As indicated, I interviewed Eddie in June-July 1991 at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC. Eddie was recorded as part of the invaluable Living Country Blues series for the German L&R label. He also had two albums released, I Wanna Boogie on Hightone, and Leland Mississippi Blues on Wolf Records. He died August 11, 2015 at the age of 89. Here is a video of him from a documentary on the Delta Blues.