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Hawkeye Herman - A Charmed LifeArticle and Photos By Greg Johnson CBA BluesNotes May 2006 |
It’s a rather nice day for late January in Memphis, Tennessee. Overcast, but mild temperatures and no sign of rain in the forecast. Michael “Hawkeye” Herman and I pull up to Snowden Elementary School in Midtown. The playground is empty, but we can feel the children all around us. Entering the school, we sign in as guests at the main office and make our way to the auditorium. Nobody is in the room, but the stage is cluttered with cellos, violas and violins. Sheet music is also strewn about. It brings a smile to our faces knowing that music is being created by young musicians in this location.
Clearing the stage enough to draw the curtain, we’re just in time as the doors at the end of the room open and in walk more than 300 students. Ten fourth and fifth grade classes for what they may feel will be just another assembly pulling them from their routine classwork. “Children,” announces the school counselor, “we are pleased to have with us today a real Blues musician. Please welcome ‘Mr. Hawkeye’ . . . “
Michael Herman was born January 11, 1945 in Davenport, Iowa, along the banks of the Mississippi River. He spent his young life living in the Quad Cities, mostly in Rock Island, home of the famed Rock Island Line. As was true in most cities of the day, segregation was everywhere. Whites and blacks pretty much kept to themselves within their own communities. And though he may not have been aware of the separation, he was still exposed to the Blues quite early. He saw the names on flyers and marquees around town. People like John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters.
As a young child, Hawkeye had a paper route. He was proud of his route because he knew he was pretty good at it. In fact he was so good at it, he was rewarded with a two-transistor radio, the state-of-the-art portable music player of its day. About the size of a pack of cigarettes with an ear-plug. It was 1956, he was eleven years old and he listened to that radio constantly. He discovered that listening late at night, he could pick up stations from all over the Midwest and South because the land is so flat. Sometimes as far away as Denver, New York City, Toronto and Del Rio, Texas. But the stations that really caught his ear came from Shreveport, Nashville and Memphis, because they were playing the Blues. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he remembers the first time he heard Howlin’ Wolf singing “Smokestack Lightning” he began dancing around in the dark, collapsing onto his bed once the song finished thinking, “What was that?” He was hooked at that point. Addicted to the Blues.
Hawkeye continued his paper route long enough to save up $17, which he used to buy his first guitar from a pawn shop. Still only 12 years old, learning to play the Blues became his passion. At 14 he bought his first album, titled “Three Of A Kind,” a collection of songs by Leadbelly, Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy. Hearing Broonzy, he was mystified. Surely there were two or three people playing guitars together. But researching music at the library he discovered Big Bill played solo. And he was intrigued to learn how to fingerpick.
“ . . . Now boys and girls, how many of you know who the greatest Blues man from Memphis is? It’s B.B. King. Now do you know that B.B. is not his real name?. Just like my real name is not really Mr. Hawkeye, it’s Michael Herman. B.B.’s real name is Riley King. When he first came to Memphis and played on the street, they used to call him the ‘Beale Street Blues Boy.’ He shortened it to ‘B.B.’ for ‘Blues Boy.’ Now I bet you just learned something that your parents don’t even know. Maybe your Big Daddy and Big Mama don’t know it either. So the next time you see B.B. on TV in a commercial for Burger King, say to them, ‘Do you know who that is?’ They’ll probably say, ‘Why that’s B.B. King.’ Then you can tell them, ‘That’s not his real name. His real name is Riley King.’ So you see, you’ve already learned something here today and you can probably teach your parents and grandparents, too . . . “
Hawkeye attended school at the University of Iowa where he studied theater and communications. His guitar playing had developed enough that he spent his free time working in coffee houses playing Folk and Blues music; performing numbers such as “Careless Love,” “St. James Infirmary” and “Tom Dooley.” He was working enough to make food and rent money, with plenty left over to buy beer.
During summer breaks, Hawkeye worked in Chicago. First drawn there by a girlfriend who lived in the city. Relocating to be closer to her, she blew him off shortly after he arrived. So finding himself alone in Chicago he began exploring Blues clubs on the South Side, where he experienced the sounds of the Blues firsthand. He met people like Magic Sam, Magic Slim and Sam Lay, and also other white musicians his own age like Paul Butterfield. It was all a part of his Blues education.
After his third summer in Chicago, Hawkeye realized that he was spending more time performing than he was attending college. So just short of a degree, he decided he had to move someplace to be closer to the Blues full-time. At this time, the only such places were either Chicago or the San Francisco Bay Area. Having been to Chicago, he decided the city was too cold for his tastes. It was also a period of mass migration to the West Coast by young people, so he set his sights on California.
Settling in Oakland, he began to immerse himself into the Bay Area Blues scene, playing on the streets at the cable car turn-arounds, Fisherman’s Wharf or Splah Plaza in Berkeley. He even attracted some pretty elite company who would often sit in, including renowned Chicago Bluesman Blind Arvella Gray, who would live in California during the winters to avoid the Midwest’s cold weather. Eventually, Hawkeye’s work on the street paid off as he was offered his first official in-door gig in 1970, opening for John Lee Hooker. He remembers his first encounter with Hooker quite fondly and how nice the elder musician was to him.
At about this time, the Berkeley Blues Festival was born. The artists brought in were straight from Hawkeye’s most inspiring list. Arriving late one year he found the concert was sold out. But fate was working in his favor that day as he was one of a dozen people selected who had not been able to gain entry that were given seats directly on the stage. Hawkeye found himself sitting merely ten feet away from Mance Lipscomb, Bukka White, Son House and Lightnin’ Hopkins.
The Berkeley Blues Festival proved to be an event where he would meet many of his heroes. Long-lasting friendships would develop through these meetings. People like Brownie McGhee, Furry Lewis and Jesse “Lone Cat” Fuller. Bukka White, who once gave a private performance for Hawkeye and his wife for two-and-a-half hours. And John Jackson, who would remain close friends for over thirty years, exchanged Christmas cards and gifts with Hawkeye until his passing.
One year, T-Bone Walker was performing at the festival, backed by a band led by guitarist Luther Allison. Hawkeye watched mesmerized by how Walker played the guitar, how he held it parallel to the ground. After the set he couldn’t help himself. He ran up to the guitarist, shook his hand and told him he’d never seen anything like it before. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon and officials from the university wanted to show T-Bone the campus. T-Bone was followed by his own entourage and Hawkeye found himself amongst them. One person in the group carried a cup, another a bottle of scotch. So as he walked around the campus with the officials, T-bone sipped on scotch while looking at the buildings as if they were real estate he was considering purchasing. Walker was dressed in a lime green suit with yellow stripes and shoes dyed to match. It was quite a sight. But what amazed Hawkeye was the fact that Walker stood only about 5’5”. He seemed so much more larger than life on stage.
When the tour ended, Hawkeye sat beneath a tree, closed his eyes and began to play his guitar while contemplating the experience he just had. When he opened his eyes he found an old black man with a long white beard standing over him. “Oh my God!” remarked Hawkeye, “you’re Sam Chatmon.” It was indeed the famed Mississippi Bluesman whose brothers included Bo Carter and the members of the Mississippi Shieks. “What are you doing here?” he asked. Chatmon said that he was there for the festival and had heard him playing, remarking that he felt he sounded pretty good. He asked Hawkeye to come with him, leading him into the student union where he retrieved a guitar from behind a couch. “Watch this stuff,” he said. “I love this kind of stuff.” He began playing “He’s In The Jailhouse Now,” followed by many more tunes over the next hour-and-a-half as a crowd of students grew around them. It was a personal guitar lesson for Hawkeye, straight from one of the originators of the Blues. When the officials finally came to tell Chatmon he was needed elsewhere, he shook Hawkeye’s hand and thanked Hawkeye for playing for him.
“ . . . Does anybody know what call and response means? How many of you go to church and you hear the preacher sing ‘Amen’? Then the congregation follows by singing ‘Amen’ and together ‘Amen, amen, amen.’ That’s a form of call and response and that along with work songs developed into the Blues. What’s a work song. It was something sung to make the day go faster. A song like ‘She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain’ is a work song. It has a basic rhythm to it. You can take that same rhythmic pattern and change its speed and it becomes a different song. Johnny Cash took that same rhythm and came up with ‘Folsom Prison Blues.’ Elvis Presley sped it up to an older song with ‘That’s All Right Mama.’ Down in Louisiana it became ‘Jambalaya.’ And Muddy Waters took that rhythm to Chicago, electrified it and it became ‘Got My Mojo Working’ . . ."
Playing in clubs as a solo act, Hawkeye supplemented his income by working a day job as a club house janitor for the world champion Oakland A’s (here meeting a whole different world of celebraties like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Vida Blue, et al). One day he answered a knock on his door and found Reggie Scanlan (co-founder and bass player of The Radiators) and 18-year-old Mark Hummel on his step. They had a proposal for him, asking if he would join their band playing behind guitarist Boogie Jake. Jake’s real name was Matthew Jacobson, he was the cousin of Little Walter and had recorded previously with Slim Harpo. The only problem was that Hawkeye did not own an electric guitar, so he’d have to find one in order to work with the band. Out of the blue, one of his co-workers at the club house approached him and asked if he would like to buy a guitar? It was a 1961 Stratocaster. He told Hawkeye he’d sell it to him for just $200, but he also had to take the old Radio Shack PA system he had, too. It was like a dream. He still owns this guitar, but it has become one of the most sought-after models having been the preferred choice of Jimi Hendrix, and it is worth so much now he doesn’t dare chance even taking it out of his home.
The band held a steady gig at The Playboy Club in Richmond. “It was in the middle of a bunch of chicken coops and broken down vacant lots,” recalls Mark Hummel Boogie Jake himself, only liked to play on weekends. But the band was booked five-nights-a-week. It became a frequent spot where other musicians would stop by to play, and they often found themselves working with folks like Little Boy Blue, Sonny Rhodes, Charles Houf, Johnny Fuller, Jimmy McCracklin and Cool Papa.
“Hawkeye was always a real character, man,” laughs Hummel. “I remember how he used to always be stompin’ his leg when he’d be up there. Singing about that ‘Big black mama, meat shakin’ on her bones . . .’ “
One night while driving home with Reggie Scanlon, Hawkeye said, “Man, I don’t know what I’m doing.” Scanlon replied, “Yes you do.” Not convinced, Hawkeye explained, “No, man. Here we’ve got Jimmy McCracklin coming in next week. I’m going to learn all of his tunes and we’ll play ‘The Walk’ and all his great stuff. But I don’t know what I’m doing.” Reggie looked at him and said, “Just play tasty, rhythmic fills.” Hawkeye chuckled at the time, but thought about it later. Tasty: that means don’t jag off on the instrument; play what you’re thinking, not what you want to try to do. Rhythmic: stay within the time of the music. Fills: don’t play too much while somebody is singing. Tasty, rhythmic fills. Play tasty, play rhythmic, fill when needed, but don’t overplay. It was a basic lesson in the Blues.
The gig at The Playboy Club lasted for several months. Then one night guitarist Tom McFarland walked into the club and sat in with the band. The next thing they knew, McFarland had been given the gig, taking Reggie along with him, leaving the rest of the band on their own.
But Hawkeye had now cut his teeth in the Oakland Blues scene and was soon taken under the wing of one of the city’s best, Cool Papa. Originally from Denver, Cool Papa spent most of his life in Oakland and was known for his outstanding guitar work and songwriting. Hawkeye would play as part of The Family Band, as Papa’s group was known, for twelve years and it was through this association that his Blues career truly started to snowball forward. And Hawkeye thanks Cool Papa for graduating him. He knows this by a simple statement made by the elder Bluesman one night when they drove home from a gig. They were crossing the Bay Bridge on a Friday night at 3:30 in the morning. Fog was all around and everything was quiet. They were quiet as well as they had just made quite a ruckus all night playing Blues. Cool Papa sat silently looking out the window, and suddenly said abruptly, “Hawkeye!” “Yes Papa,” asked Hawkeye. He told him, “You got something that’s your own. Don’t ever forget it.” He then returned to staring out the window and Hawkeye got chills. Because he knew what he was being told. In his own way, Papa was telling him, “You’ve been with me a long time. You’ve learned your lessons and you have found your voice within the Blues.”
Throughout his time playing with Cool Papa, Hawkeye had still retained working as a solo acoustic musician, as well as playing both Jazz and Country music. It was now 1986 and he decided the time was right for him to create a recording of his own. He was beginning to tour by himself and people were asking for something of his they could take home. If somebody comes up to you with money in hand and you do not have product to sell; well, that’s just bad business. Of course it would be an acoustic album, but he had his mind set on two guests for certain: Cool Papa and his neighbor, Charles Brown.
Looking back on his recordings, Hawkeye does not like to listen to himself. But he will go back to the two tracks he did with Brown, “Driftin’ Blues” and “Blues After Hours.” The idea was to capture that original Blues duet sound of piano and guitar, ala Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, or Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr. Listening to these songs with Charles Brown makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was one of his proudest moments as a musician.
“ . . . When you go home from school, does your mother ask you, ‘What dd you learn in school today?’ And isn’t your usual response, ‘Nothing.’ That’s because you want to run out and play with your friends or the dog, or watch Sponge Bob on TV. There’s too much to do. But if your teachers were to hear you say, ‘nothing,’ how do you think they would feel. They spend all day with you trying to give you knowledge. If they heard you say ‘nothing,’ it would probably make them cry. So tonight, after you’ve spent the day with Mr. Hawkeye, when your parents ask you what you learned, I want you to place your hand on your hip, cock your head back and forth with a little attitude and say this, ‘The Blues had a baby and they named it Rock & Roll, it makes me feel good from my head down to my toes.’ Now stand up and practice. I want to hear you sing this . . . “
Blues in the Schools specialists Fruteland Jackson & Hawkeye Herman take time out together in Memphis.
In 1992, Hawkeye was approached to write music for a play. It fell right in line with his studies in college. And because he did so well with that first play, he was asked to do another in 1994. That second play was called “El Paso Blue,” and he won a Barrymore Award in Philadelphia (that city’s equivalent to the Tony Award) for his work. The play toured the country, with performances Off-Broadway and in major cities like Chicago, Seattle, even Portland. In 1999, he received a call from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, asking if he would take seven months off the road to be the musical director for “El Paso Blue” in their next season in Ashland. He accepted. After just two weeks living in Ashland, he looked around, noticing the quiet and the beauty of the Southern Cascades, he decided right then, this was the place he wanted to live full-time. He’d had enough of the urban environment and was ready to settle in Southern Oregon’s serenity.
For the past twenty-five-plus years, Hawkeye Herman has also been taking his Blues performances into the schools. It’s his way of paying back to the African American culture that gave us the greatest of gifts this country has: the Blues. The watershed of American popular music. Or as he quotes Willie Dixon, “Blues is the roots, everything else is the fruits.” How can he pay back so many people that had given to him so freely as he came up. Nobody who was in the Blues who brought him along ever asked him for a nickel. Not Bukka White, not Sam Chatmon. No one, with maybe the exception of Lightnin’ Hopkins who took it from him playing pool and then felt sorry for him and gave him a guitar lesson. But that’s another story. None of these people ever asked him for a penny. And they never questioned him the color of his skin either.
“They could feel my vibration,” states Hawkeye. “They could see that my heart and soul were into this and that I was genuinely interested. Regardless of my skin color, somebody has to carry the torch. They’re going to pass the information on so the music lives on. How can I pay them back? The best way is to carry the torch. And pass it on.”
So now whenever Hawkeye Herman travels around the country performing in clubs, he tries to set up Blues in the Schools appearances in the cities he visits. In 1998, his efforts were rewarded by The Blues Foundation as they presented him with a Keeping the Blues Alive award for education excellence.
Often Hawkeye is approached after an appearance by teachers and principals who remark how amazed they are that he can hold the childrens’ attention so completely. He is usually told ahead of time, “You’ll never be able to keep their attention for an hour.” So Hawkeye purposely runs his shows 70-minutes. He speaks with the children and has them interact in his performance. He is entertaining and the time runs by quickly. After one such performance, he ran into the school’s principal in a restaurant a day later. The principal told him that after his show they held a faculty meeting and decided that being entertaining was an effective teaching technique that they had never approached. It didn’t need to be just recitation from a book. They learned this from Hawkeye and he thanked him for opening their eyes and bringing forth this change.
After the assembly at Snowden has finished, 300-plus children are leaving the auditorium. All have smiles on their faces, many still dancing and singing, “The Blues had a baby and they named it Rock & Roll.” Again Hawkeye and I look at one another and smile. Not only have they been entertained, they have learned a little something about the Blues today, too. He feeds off of the children’s enthusiasm everytime. Driving back to downtown Memphis, Hawkeye speaks of his educational performances. “When I talk before an audience of older students in a guitar workshop and I mention something like, ‘Well Son House held his slide on his third finger and I wear mine like this . . .’ I often get interrupted by somebody who remarks, ‘You knew Son House?’ Forty years ago I never imagined that these older artists would no longer be around and people would be asking about Son House, or Bukka White, or Lightnin’ Hopkins. To them they’re all dusty old photographs. I have to keep my focus on the education or I’ll find myself getting off-track talking about how Bukka White was once a boxer and he liked to drink peach brandy. Or how Lightnin’ Hopkins kicked my butt in eight-ball three games in a row and then had the nerve to take my money, too.
“Sometimes I have to listen to myself tell the things that have happened in my life. It’s like wow! Who wrote this script? I have played music professionally since 1973. I never thought that would happen. I always thought that I would have to work day jobs. But because of people in my past sharing information with me I have been able to do this. I think back on the things that have happened in my life: I needed a guitar and the Stratocaster came to me for $200 or I open my eyes and there’s Sam Chatmon. If any one of these occurrences in my life would have been all that had happened I would’ve felt blessed.
“I only regret that I didn’t have the opportunity presented to me when I was a kid to have a Blues musician come into my third grade class. When you go into an assembly and play before children, if you touch just one child inspiring them toward playing the Blues or music in general, you have done your job. I believe if I would’ve had the chance to see somebody like Lightnin’ Hopkins as a kid at my school, I would’ve been that one child. I have lived a charmed life. So how can I not go out and share it with kids? I’m not going to live forever. And somebody’s got to carry this torch."
Hawkeye Herman and CBA President Greg Johnson at The Blues Foundation office in Memphis, TN.
(Photo by Robert Stolpe)