Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On: My Life in Music

Jeannie Cheatham

Published by University of Texas Press 2006

Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On

My Life in Music

Jeannie Cheatham

https://doi.org/10.7560/712935

Overview
Contents

About this book

Jeannie Cheatham is a living legend in jazz and blues. A pianist, singer, songwriter, and co-leader of the Sweet Baby Blues Band, she has played and sung with many of the greats in blues and jazz—T-Bone Walker, Dinah Washington, Cab Callaway, Joe Williams, Al Hibbler, Odetta, and Jimmy Witherspoon. Cheatham toured with Big Mama Thornton off and on for ten years and was featured with Thornton and Sippie Wallace in the award-winning PBS documentary Three Generations of the Blues. Her music, which has garnered national and international acclaim, has been described as unrestrained, exuberant, soulful, rollicking, wicked, virtuous, wild, and truthful. Cheatham's signature song, "Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On" is a staple in jazz and blues clubs across America and in Europe, Africa, and Japan.

In this delightfully frank autobiography, Jeannie Cheatham recalls a life that has been as exuberant, virtuous, wild, and truthful as her music. She begins in Akron, Ohio, where she grew up in a vibrant multiethnic neighborhood surrounded by a family of strong women. From those roots, she launched a musical career that took her from the Midwest to California, doing time along the way everywhere from a jail cell in Dayton, Ohio, where she was innocently caught in a police raid, to the University of Wisconsin-Madison—where she and Jimmy Cheatham taught music. Cheatham writes of a life spent fighting racism and sexism, of rage and resolve, misery and miracles, betrayals and triumphs, of faith almost lost in dark places, but mysteriously regained in a flash of light. Cheatham's autobiography is also the story of her fifty-years-and-counting love affair and musical collaboration with her husband and band partner, Jimmy Cheatham.

Author / Editor information

Jeannie Cheatham is still actively creating and performing the music she loves. Her albums include Good Nuz Bluz, Blues & the Boogie Masters, Basket Full of Blues, Luv in the Afternoon, Back to the Neighborhood, Homeward Bound, Midnight Mama, and Sweet Baby Blues.

Reviews

Here's a breezy, light, and utterly charming tale of a musician's life with all the ups-and-downs and turns-and-twists that are a part of those of us in jazz. Jeannie Cheatham knows everybody, and she has much to say about her fellow musicians. Her descriptive style paints an unforgettable picture as she covers the last fifty years of being on the scene with her husband Jimmy and the Sweet Baby Blues Band.

— Marian McPartland

Being an admitted, although recovering, racist and sexist when it comes to playing blues and jazz, I have been further educated and much less prejudiced after reading Jeannie Cheatham's book Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On. Jeannie's book drives home the fact that we who embrace music as a profession share common joys and common miseries. Having played with Jeannie I will never again say "plays good for a woman." I can't say she's "one of the boys," but she is definitely one of the musicians. Thanks, Jeannie, for a wonderful book from another point of view.

— Fred Wesley

The truth is alive and well in Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On! I know, because I've been the legendary Bo Diddley's band leader and bass player for twenty years. Prior to that, I got to spend two incredible years playing with Jeannie Cheatham. She taught me where 'the pocket' is. This book is right in 'the pocket.'

— Debby Hastings

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Prologue: Brand-New Blues Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Back to the ’Hood Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
The Piano Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	8
Three Visitors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
Mr. Arthur Reginald Riley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
Funerals Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
The Reverend Uncle Frank, Lessons on Men, and Finding Jesus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	22
The Coming of the Cold Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
Summer Heat Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
Wrong Direction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	36
The New House Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
It’s an Ill Wind That Don’t Blow Somebody Some Good Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
Yellow Cab to the Red-Light District Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
Junkies and Jazz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
WorldWar II: Let the Good Times Roll Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Just Get On the Greyhound, Girl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
The Evans Exodus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
Jailhouse Blues Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
From Hell to Heaven Blues Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
Snowbound Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
The Song of the Colvinaires Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
New Baby Blues Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
A Blizzard of Birdshit Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
The Colors of Many Changes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
Triumph, Tragedy, Turmoil, and Tenor Players Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
A Little Love Song Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Little Mattie, Big Mama, and the Beautiful Miss M Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
The Blues and the Buffalo Scuffle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Escape from Buffalo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
New York City, Ditty-Wah-Ditty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
Fatback Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Bronx Gulag and Agoraphobia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	212
The Light Shineth in the Darkness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
From Hell to Academia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Welcome to Wisconsin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	232
On the Move in Madison Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Movin’ an’ Moanin’, Groovin’ an’ Groanin’ in Madison Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
The Way West Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	266
Pipe Dreamin’ in the Valley of Smoke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	270
A Standing O in San Diego Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Take It Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
Beelzebub and the Mad Mexican Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	295
Make a Joyful Noise Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
New Mule Kickin’ in Our Stall Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	302
Blues on the Omnibus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
Blow Out at the Belly Up Tavern and the Birth of Three Generations of the Blues Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	308
Mr. Jefferson Comes to Town Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
The Birth of the Sweet Baby Blues Band Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	323
Hot Bulbs and Hot Flashes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	330
Sturm und Drang Blues: Vienne, France Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	338
Shoofly Pie with Shafafa in The Hague Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	344
Chickenshit or Chicken Salad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	349
How Long Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	354
Effluvia and Euphoria Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	368
From Slavery to the White House Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	376
Tears of Sorrow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379
Blues like Jay McShann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	386
ABC: Around theWorld, Beyond Betrayal, Celebrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	392
Livin’ in the Nineties Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	401
Making History in a Small Hotel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	408
Back to Bina Avenue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	411

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 436

eBook

Published: January 1, 2010
ISBN: 9780292796096