Jimmy sat on the pavement outside Café Nero, and strummed
his acoustic guitar, occasionally running his long golden ringed fingers up and
down the smooth neck, picking out quivering, moody notes. Every now and again he would look up from his
playing and survey the street scene from behind his Dylanesque
shades…smooth.
He was thinking, among other things, of a name. Every great bluesman needed one – Howlin’
Somethingorother; ole’ Johnny Whatshischops; Blind Billy from Shit Creek, and
so forth. On his Styrofoam coffee cup
the waitress had scribbled ‘Jimmy’ with a felt-tip pen. But only Jimmy.
~
Some years previous, when Jimmy was (just about) holding
down a job as a deck-chair salesman (the astro-turf show court was – almost – his
element), he had read in the
newspaper during a quiet period at work that none other than Sir Thumbs Aloft
had just recorded and released an album with Starbucks. Starbucks are a multinational coffee chain;
they also have a record label.
Café Nero, meanwhile was, and had been for a while, where
Jimmy entertained the parallel fantasy that one day someone (preferably a tall,
leggy, blonde A&R girl) would discover him.
The fantasy that he played out every other weekday morning went
something like this:
Jimmy would come in from the deserted street, guitar slung
across his back. The waitress would stop
grinding coffee beans and look up. Jimmy
would tip his hat, and approach the counter, as her eyes filled with (some kind
of) awe. Perhaps the jukebox (a flight
of the imagination in Café Nero, Jimmy had to concede) would go silent - but the
expectation would be palpable.
Jimmy, seating himself on a high-stool at the counter, would
look from under the brim of his battered Stetson, and just before the waitress
dropped the china she had been cradling in her hands, ask for a coffee (not a Latte, or a Mocha), a good ole’ black American coffee – straight from God’s
good earth. Amen!
~
The next bit was always slightly harder for Jimmy to
imagine, he, like so many others, was hopeless at writing dialogue – especially
in his own head.
Anyway, after a muted exchange, even at which the waitress
would not be able to contain her excitement at having a mysterious bluesman - the
Crawling King Snake - in her midst, he’d
lift the guitar off his back and launch effortlessly into the beginning of Keith Don’t Go by Nils Lofgren or
something equally show-stopping: da da dada da da da!
Once he had played several numbers, and a small (but extremely appreciative) crowd had
gathered (and perhaps started to whoop and cheer as his magic fingers danced up
and down the fret-board), the door would open again: cue the entry of the
A&R girl.
And fame. And
money. And sex (maybe with the A&R
girl, maybe with another star child). And
fast cars. And parties. And (soft) drugs…would follow.
But to start with Jimmy needed a name!
~
Jimmy’s first port of call in search of a name was The Urban
Dictionary of Hispter Slang.
Yessir!
Jimmy figured that if this didn’t lead to him
finding a name, he might in lieu pick up a smattering of blues lingo
along the way.
He did. And started
playing it straight-from-the-fridge
ever after.
(Well, he tried).
(Well, he tried).
Next, he visited Bandnamegenartor.com (Oh! The fun one can
have with this marvellous innovation).
Here are some of the possibilities it offered him straight off:
- Bitter Jimmy (this he thought had a certain ring, but
might be easily misconstrued)
- Aging Jimmy (while this was true, Jimmy didn’t particularly
wish to acknowledge the advancement of his years, at least not until the BBC
Four retrospective of his career was broadcast)
- Jimmy Bamboo (Jimmy dismissed this one out of hand; it
sounded like the kind of name one would confer on a musical panda)
..and Veggie Dyslexic.
Veggie Dyslexic, however, were already a popular alternative
punk band, so it turned out, playing Shoreditch clubs – they had a policy of no
meet at their gigs, and no lever.
~
Lo, the quest for a name continued, and on one damp
September morning, Jimmy was to be found at Southampton dock waiting to board a
sail-boat heading to America . There he planned to visit the Windy City –
Chicago , the Home of the Blues, and consult the
Blues Oracle.
The Blues Oracle was reputed to live in a small, dingy,
rented room underneath the Brown Line on the Chicago loop, where CTA trains
rattled by the open window day and night.
Some said The Blues Oracle was an ancient black man with big yellow eyes,
liquor stained teeth and a chewed up suit; others said the Blues Oracle wasn’t
a man at all, simply a dusty box of 1950s Chess records.
Either way, Jimmy hoped to see for himself.
But hoping is sometimes the biggest mistake one can
make. Hope too much and fate and fortune
will desert you. For when Jimmy stepped
off the Brown Line CTA train at what he thought was the home of The Blues Oracle
he found a sign on the door - it read: ‘the Home of the Blues has now moved to
Jackson, Mississippi’, and then underneath, almost as an afterthought: ‘and so
has the Blues Oracle’.
Jimmy broke down and cried right there on the doorstep.
~
So back to London Jimmy went (he couldn’t afford a Greyhound
bus to Jackson ),
and back to his favourite café (the one named after a murderous Roman emperor)..
..then, about a month later, sitting in his usual place on the pavement one lazy mid-week
afternoon, plucking at his guitar, musing on life, love, law, poetry and so on,
he noticed a crowd forming.
Presently the crowd turned into an orderly queue with nearly a hundred
men, women, boys and girls, some of whom were clutching autograph books, and
other assorted memorabilia.
Jimmy stopped his noodling, and wondered.
Just who where these
people waiting for?
A great Coffee Barrista?! A Russian oligarch?? A Premier League footballer??
For the next half an hour the queue grew longer, until it
was reaching all the way down the street to the cross roads and around the
corner. Whoever this is, Jimmy thought,
is BIG.
And now two long black Mercedes Benz had pulled up across
the street and the orderly queue suddenly turned into a mad rush, hundreds descending
on the two automobiles like a pack of dogs, or a flock of Hitchcock birds.
Jimmy did something he rarely did – he put down his guitar
and stood up to get a better view.
The police were on the scene quickly - wobbly chins, rubber
truncheons, day-glo jackets - and began to attempt to quell the ravers, make a
gangway for whoever was about to emerge from the scrum; the scrupulous dignity of a few
moments earlier had entirely disappeared.
While Jimmy thought how it would be such an anti-climax if
all this fuss was for Madonna, flash bulbs started going off, and the shrieks
and cries from the near delirious mass intensified – sporadic and hysterical
chants of ‘Hey Jude’ and few other Wings songs were breaking out all around.
Then the passenger door of one of the Mercedes opened, and out
stepped Sir Thumbs Aloft, turtle like and seventy plus, yet still sporting a linen
suit, still a star, and with him his tall, blonde, (one) legged A&R girl.
Jimmy’s blue heart leapt.
Perhaps all his time spent posturing on the pavement outside
the café had and would not be in vein, after all.
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