May 2010 Issue
Ace's Alley
By Johnny Ace

WHERE’S THAT SUIT?
As you read this new issue of Big City Blues, it looks like summer is just about to press its hot humid hell into our bodies and minds, for many causing total discomfort and for others, total bliss! Well, wherever you are, I wish you a happy summer and to each his (or her) own. I prefer it here in San Francisco where there’s NO summer!

Since our last issue a lot has happened. At The W.C. Fields, I mean HANDY Awards in Memphis, my dear friend Tommy Castro walked off with four awards, including the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year award! We here in the Bay Area congratulate Tommy because has worked so hard over the last 16 years. RIDE! Also my dear friend David Maxwell and Louisiana Red won “Acoustic Album of the Year” for “You Got to Move” on Vizztone. And not only do I say congratulations to all the other winners, but to everyone who was nominated. MERCY!

I had a great time back in March 2010 over at Biscuits and Blues here in San Francisco watching Keith Crossin and all his musical friends playing at his release party for his solo CD “The Beatnik Jungle.” There were just too many musicians who played to mention. What I really enjoyed was watching everyone having a ball up there. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. NO EGO’S! Just FUN and good music! I always wish Keith the best!

I also had a fine time at San Francisco’s stellar old palace, The Great American Music Hall. Bob Margolin was there helping to promote a new blues movie "For Once and For All.” He led an all-star blues review called "The Perfect Age for Rock 'n Roll Band” with Pinetop Perkins (piano); Hubert Sumlin (guitar); Sugar Blue (harp); Elvin Bishop (guitar); Willie “Big Eyes” Smith; and Bob Stroger (bass.) All these performers sang. The sell out crowd really got there money’s worth in blues.

Well, I can’t tell you about all the music I have heard, so lets go from now into the past for a little story about a suit—well, three suits. I’d say the year was around 1975 or ‘76. These years do have a tendency to jumble together as one. MERCY! I was working at that time with my man harpist, pianist, guitarist, and accordion player Paul Oscher, who, back then was booking himself as “Brooklyn Slim.” Paul I think was going for that anonymous, mysterious image. We had an excellent band that had the ever present at the time, now deceased, Candy McDonald on drums. Candy is a whole story all by him self. WOW! On piano on that gig was the GREAT David Maxwell. David would drive down from his home in Boston just to be part of the fun and groove. Ha HA!

We were gigging mostly in nasty bars in Brooklyn where if you mentioned the name “Muddy Waters” the clientele would think, with what little brains they had, that Muddy Waters was an old swamp in the flatlands of Canarsie that was used to dump dead bodies in by The Corporation! RIDE! Well, thanks to the powers of the above, someone told the great rock 'n roll songwriter Doc Pomus about our group and Doc got us a steady Sunday gig at a cozy club "The Fugue" on 1st Avenue between 16th and 17th streets in Manhattan. Finally we had a club and a crowd who knew that Dr. Ross didn’t run the methadone clinic at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, but that he did have “The Boogie Disease.” He-he…

What I didn’t mention was that during this time disco was sweeping the whole country like wild fire. And it did start in New York. So New York was going wild with “DISCO FEVER!” It was great for the people who loved to boogie down to The Bee Gee’s, but not for blues musicians who had to make a living playing blues. Clubs that had live music were now going disco. It was a bit like karaoke now. So we were struggling to make a living.

Anyway, since the money was a bit thin—and the times—Paul and me didn’t have much in the way of stage clothes. Our slim $ was going into rent, food, and recreational drink. RIDE! So we were basically wearing the same suits gig after gig! Hark! Our dear friend and teacher Victoria “Queenie” Spivey to the rescue! What happened was Queenie would come to "The Fugue" with her man Lenny Kunstant. They still had their blues record company Spivey Records in Brooklyn. They’d come by to hang out and look for new talent to record for their label, and Queenie would always sit in. I also knew Queenie and Lenny from their tiny, dusty, record filled store in Brooklyn called "Spivey Records" where I would buy and sell records to make extra money. Lenny ALWAYS’S got the better hand. Ha HA! He was a PRO!

Well, one dark and lonely night after getting paid at "The Fugue" Queenie hit me up for twenty bucks. Now back then, that was a lot of money! And I really couldn’t afford to do it. But since I loved Queenie so much and had learned so much from her, and also because I had had some of the GREATEST moments in my then young life with her, I gave her the twenty bucks.

About two weeks went by. I didn’t see Queenie and I needed the twenty bucks for my rent. I in NO way wanted to call up Lenny, but I had to tell him what happened so he could tell Queenie that I needed the money back. On the phone Lenny was a bit perturbed, but he knew what was in Queenie's mind. He told me, “Victoria doesn’t need money. She was just testing you to see if you were her friend. If you really need the money now, come by Queenie’s pad and she’ll pay you." I guess Queenie felt really bad because she called up Paul and told him that she wanted to take me and him and Sugar Blue out to lunch and give us each one hundred bucks to buy us new suits! RIDE!!

We all met Queenie in this really nice bar in the Far West Village on 7th Avenue, South, a couple of stores next to "The Village Vanguard." They had real high class hamburgers there. That’s what we all had. It was so beautiful. Back then since times were tough and there weren’t a lot of gigs, there was a lot of rivalry between musicians. That day, and many, many times before that, Queenie would tell me and Paul, and Sugar Blue that we had to learn to get along. It wasn’t too easy, but we did tell Queenie that we’d do our best.

About three months went by. We were all still gigging at "The Fugue." Paul did buy his suit. He went to a thrift shop and got a cheap one. I never asked Blue if he bought one. I know I never did. I used Queenie’s one hundred bucks just to survive.

O.K. we were at "The Fugue;" it was late. Queenie was there watching us play. It was brake time. I went over to her table. She had a nice little buzz working. She was staring at me with that great, pissed off glazed look of hers. Her eyes were throwing stilettos at me. She said to me in that totally unique, monotone, kind of scary, female Jimmy Reed type voice, “Jooohnny, where’s that suit?” DAMN! I was at a loss for words. I felt really bad. I can’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t a good enough lie. No way could you fool “The Queen.” And she was mad at me. But she knew what the situation was.

About six or so months later, I woke up at 6:00 AM stone cold sober. At the foot of my bed very proudly displayed on a small, old, beaten up, wooden night table was an 8x10 photo of me and Queenie on stage together at The 1973 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. She signed it for me one night when she and Lenny drove me home from a gig in “The Chariot,” Lenny’s station wagon. I treasured it then, and I treasure it now. As I rubbed my eyes in half-sleep, mad that I had to wake up at such a nasty hour, I looked in front of me at the foot of my bed and saw the photo of Queenie and me. The photo had a golden glowing light slowly vibrating all around it. It kind of looked like a flying saucer from outer space that had just landed in my bedroom. Like I said, I was straight—no hallucinogenics were taken the night before. I went back to bed a bit confused.

At 10:00 AM that same morning the phone rang. I picked it up. It was Paul Oscher. He told me that Queenie had passed on earlier that morning. I’ll say no more, except at Queenie’s funeral, Paul was up at the podium, tears falling from his eyes, telling the people there that Queenie had gotten him the suit he was now wearing. I wish too that I would have bought a suit with the one hundred bucks that Queenie gave me. But it didn’t happen that way.

The Photo That Glowed: Johnny Ace and Victoria Spivey at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, 1973. Photo: Ace Archives.

Johnny Ace and his partner Cathy Lemons can be reached through their website www.lemonace.com or aceonbass@earthlink.net. Their new CD “Lemonace” on Vizztone is available through www.vizztone.com.