Keri the bartender is slinging margarita’s at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville on Decatur Street. She is no bimbo behind the bar, dressed down in t-shirt and jeans and primed for action, a dynamo with the hands of a card sharp, giving each tumbler a signature triple flip before she fills it with a crisp thwack, all while watching the customers clustered around the bandstand with dark, steely eyes. Six drunk Australians beat a hasty retreat during the applause for Washboard Chaz as he finishes a set, but even though she’s got a trio of salt-rimmed glasses about to be filled Keri catches the action and is around the bar and out the door in a flash, herding a sheepish tourist back to settle up. Chaz sits at the bar and nods appreciatively.
“I like playing these Margaritaville gigs,” he says. “The crowds are easy to get going. ‘Go Pittsburgh,’” he cackles.
The bar was indeed filled with the black and yellow colors of the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose fans were arriving en masse for that Sunday’s game with the Saints.
Chaz retakes the stage with his trio and launches into an amazing set of 1930s-era blues tunes. In a town full of frattoir players Chaz plays the archaic, wood-framed washboard blues. Someone calls out for “Paper in My Shoe” and he says “Not today,” launching instead into Tommy Johnson’s “Big Road Blues,” followed by Robert Johnson’s “32-20.”
Unlike the zydeco players, Chaz plays the instrument like Baby Dodds played the drums. Each hand works independently, and his scrapes and picks articulate not just rhythms but single notes. The board is his drum kit; the metal panel his snare, two varied-size cans at the bottom of the board his bass and tom, and his trademark bell punctuates the end of each line.
“I’m playing the melody,” says Chaz. “That’s what a good drummer is supposed to do, play the melody.
“These days zydeco washboard is always accompanied by drums, so you don’t get to do that much and it’s mostly an uptempo type of thing,” he explains. “There are a lot of fine zydeco washboard players around, but you don’t get a chance to do as much coloration because you’re following a set rhythm, whereas the blues washboard defines and carries the rhythm without drums.”
In his porkpie hat and reedy voice he sounds uncannily like the authentic product of a bygone era. His album, Courtyard Blues, sounds like a Washboard Sam session. It actually sounds like it was made in the 1930s.
“That’s actually what I was trying to do,” said Chaz. “We did it live, not mastered, minimal mixing, I wanted to preserve that ’30s feel. Somehow it worked out.
“I go through washboards pretty quickly. I used to go through them once every couple of months. Then some other people bought the Columbus washboard company, I used to get mine by the dozen from them, and they lined it with stronger metal, which gave it a tinnier sound and it’s also louder and it lasts forever. I’ve had this one at least six months.”
Each time he gets a new board he sits down and paints CHAZ on the top panel of the board.
“That’s what it is, get myself a beer, smoke a joint, put it all together, paint it up, just like that. I use a peanut can, they’re getting harder to find, most of ’em have that cardboard stuff around them, and a large juice can, tomato juice or something like that. I get different sounds from the different sizes of the cans; I can play notes on the cans based on the position that I hit them at. The bell I use as kind of like my crash cymbal. It cuts through everything.”
Chaz is one of the best interpreters of Robert Johnson material I’ve ever heard. His version of “Come On In My Kitchen” is eerie shit, right down to the way he moans in imitation of the howling wind.
“I slowed it way down,” he says. “They hardly ever do it that slow, but I wanted to slow it real down and bring out the pathos of the song and the emotion of the song. There ain’t much more spooky a person than Robert Johnson or Tommy Johnson. Those two cats are really out there.”
Chaz even has new material that updates the ’30s style. He played a knee-slapper, “Caller ID.”
“That’s about a friend of mine, it’s a true story, a friend of mine from Kansas City calling his girl friend from his other girl friend’s house. But she had caller ID. I have quite a few originals. On my next CD I’ll do some more of those.”
Several songs by Bukka White reflect a relationship Chaz struck with the blues legend during a long residence in Boulder, Colorado.
“He came there in ’75,” Chaz recalls. “What a cat, great songwriter. He was kind of old and he drank a lot but he had such wisdom, he was a powerful singer and a powerful player. ‘Keep it real,’ that’s what he always told me. ‘Keep it real.’ I’ve played with a lot of people who say ‘Man, I haven’t heard anybody play like that since Washboard Sam. That’s the real thing.’ So that kind of spurred me on to keep playing the washboard.”
The album closes with “Bukka’s Jitterbug Swing.”
“That’s the Mississippi blues man’s response to the swing craze that was sweeping the nation,” Chaz notes. “Then in the ’60s he updated it to ‘Bukka’s Jitterbug Twist.’ You gotta keep up with the dances.”
AINSWORTH BENEFIT
The New Orleans musical community offered another example of its bottomless heart October 9 with a rousing benefit for local bassist Will Ainsworth, who is undergoing a slow and painful recovery from cancer.
Chris Thomas King played a fierce set in a trio format, opening with “Johnny B. Goode,” referencing Prince and turning in a spectacular version of James Brown’s “I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing.” Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters blew the place apart, with Walter supported by Kipori “Baby Wolf” Woods on second guitar. Washington, fresh from his mind-boggling performance the weekend before at Robyn Halverson’s annual Bywater bash, “Decadence XXVIII,” which went past 4 a.m. in the lot next to the abandoned Rice Mill on Chartres Street, was given his own benefit earlier this year at House of Blues after his van was stolen with all his equipment in it, and he definitely returned the musical favor at the Maple Leaf. Rockin’ Jake, backed by Randy Ellis on guitar, Dirty Mouth bassist Josh Kerin and Anders Osborne’s drummer Doug Belote, played a great mini-set of “Hit the Highway,” “Goin’ Back to the Big Easy,” “Full Time Work” and Clifton Chenier’s “Zydeco Cha Cha.” Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes, Coco Robicheaux, Washboard Chaz, Mem Shannon and J. Monque ’D were also on hand, not to mention all the musicians in the audience who just turned out to support the gig.
“For a side guy who’s not really a band leader it went well,” said Ainsworth. “We raised something like $3,000 dollars at the gig. I feel blessed. I’m cancer free at the moment, although I have to have radiation treatments and I have a lot of physical therapy in front of me.
“At one point my doctor was concerned he might have to amputate my leg. In early March I was gigging with Pat Ramsey and the Blues Disciples. I had a 70-pound unit that sits atop two 4 x 10 speakers, and I’m used to just swinging it off the top at the end of the night. This one night it hit my inner thigh and I thought I had a charley horse. The bump didn’t heal right. I kept thinking it was a hematoma but it never went away. I scheduled a visit through the Musicians Clinic and the surgeons who examined me both mentioned cancer. They scheduled me immediately for an MRI.”
Ainsworth has recorded with Sunpie Barnes and Coco Robicheaux as well as the Kenny Wayne Shepherd classic “Ledbetter Heights.” He came to New Orleans in 1984 from Austin, Texas in a 327 Chevy Impala Station Wagon he got from the wacky guit-steel maverick Junior Brown.
“We were roommates briefly in Austin,” Ainsworth said with a laugh. “At the time he had no money. I found the apartment, paid the deposit and the first month’s rent, got the utilities set up, and after about four days it was clear that we weren’t gonna get along. I ended up trading him the apartment for that car, which I lived in for several months.”
