Part 1: The Migrating Memory of Music
Article & Inquiries by Laura Bailey “LB” Brandon
Music, Poetry, & Stories by Charles “Buddy” Smith
A direct link to music history in the city is the legendary Charles “Buddy” Smith, the Northern Soul Legend of Detroit. We met at a community event in 2014 and solidified our connection over a chance encounter at Belle Isle’s Hipster Beach. Since, he’s seen me grow and settle into adulthood. We’ve made music together, gone camping, and schemed — nurturing our musical dreams. When we meet, Buddy always has music to play for me. True to form, Buddy began playing as soon as I was ready to listen during a visit in February. “Lemme show ya somethin”, he said, taking a seat behind his Casio keyboard. He started pressing keys, watching his hands move left and right. Memory took over as he closed his eyes. He played to set the tone, to show me that it’s time to slow. He sang, his voice a gentle wave that lapped at the shore of my mind. Piano notes washed over the sound of his fingers hitting the keys. I, too, closed my eyes and saw him in various forms, all the places I’ve seen him perform before. I picture the legends he’s introduced me to — Sixto Rodriguez, John Sinclair, Billy Davis, Shondu Akiem. I knelt beside him with a mic in hand, ready to be a human mic stand, to catch the waves before they rolled back out to sea.
(While playing his keyboard, Buddy sings. His voice is rich and full of emotion.)
Let me tell ya
Mother’s crying
Children dying
Fathers, you know they’re sighing
This ain’t the way it’s supposed to be
Not for you and me
You work your fingers to the bone
Before you get your check
Your money’s gone
Come on now
Walk with me
Talk with me
Dance with me
Put our hands together
Love one another
Why can’t we get along?
One of them things, ya know. It’s the way that I’m doing the words. I hear things come to me, like this here.
Mothers crying
Fathers sighing
Look at the children dying
Out in the streets
You know this ain’t the way for you and me
Talkin bout, peace, love & happiness
Up in the morning
Out on the shore
Working my fingers to the bone
Come on now
Look around ya
We’re supposed to care
Give a little
Take a little
Share, share share
Right there. I got a thing I’m doing with this. I’m trying to work it in here. What you hear now, I’m gonna work at it and add it together, but I do stuff like this.
(Buddy drags his fingers back and forth across the keys. He uses a pitch bender, experimenting with the melody, then continues singing.)
Don’t you see, this ain’t the way it’s supposed to be
Why don’t we come together?
You know I got to get this one right here.
(Buddy transitions to a new song.)
You got to live together.
You got to walk with each other.
You got to
(Notes carry on until his music slows and fades into another song. He adlibs until words take shape.)
Remembering yesterday
When the days go by
Sometime I cry
Sometime I’m blue
And I close my eyes
Say a prayer
Want you to know
That I care
Walk with me
(Blues emerge after a dreamy interlude. He sings until transitioning again, focusing on the keys. His dog, Milo, chews a squeaky toy in the other room, rhythmically with song. Buddy’s playing crescendos into a classic riff.)
Yeah, that’s one of them old classics.
(He sings Satin Doll, toying with the words and the melody. Soon he pulls another song out.)
I know you’ll remember this.
Sometime I feel
Sometime it’s real
(His voice floats into my ears like a leaf being carried downstream.)
You know, when I be playing keyboard, I think about different people that I played with back in the day, coming up with, you know. I’ve been around a lot of good musicians. And most of the musicians that I’ve been around never had a lesson. We come up in the churches. And shit, I know I was in church. Sundays boy. I was in the church from the time the door was open to the time they closed with my mama, you know, with my mama. But my dad, he was for real, for real, you know. The only time I knew my dad to go to church was when somebody died, you know, or was getting married or something. But he…If he went to a funeral, he had to know you good. But it was cool. It was cool. It was cool… I got a lot of stuff I want to do.
Can ask I you some questions, Buddy?
Umhm.
This is the Soul of Charles Buddy Smith.
(Buddy continues playing, summoning his memories.)
I can remember the days
When we were so young
I can remember
One of the first blues I learned to play, just sitting up playing…
How old were you?
How old was I? About 11 or 12. Bout 11 or 12. Ya know, I used to go to a place. They called it the Bucket of Blood. It was down on Buchanan and McKinley. It was a blues club. Washboard Willie. He would be playing there.
He played a washboard?
Yes ma’am. Yes ma’am. He’d tie that sucker around his neck, boy, and he could play that washboard. Yeah. There was a lot of them. There was a lot of them out there that, you know, I can remember. Uncle Jessie. You probably heard of Uncle Jessie, huh?
Ringing a bell.
Yeah. Uncle Jessie… Uncle Jessie, when I was a kid, lived on 28th and Buchanan, down in that area somewhere. I was down on 23rd, but I was a kid. And I used to walk down there to his house. And anytime you went to his house, it was gonna be somebody in there playing… He would play with them for a while and when he get tired he go in there and lay down and when he go lay down everybody in the house (well nobody be leaving, the door always open) somebody come in and started playing, you know, and they play all night, play all night, you know. But none of them was, none of them was studying any music. No, I think the only one who was good with them charts was McKinley, Mckinley Jackson. You know, McKinley, boy, McKinley was reading before he was walking. You know, he could write that stuff down. He could go in somewhere and play the jukebox and hear a tune, and while the tune was playing, he’d be writing them notes down. He’s one of the best ones that’s out there. And you know that…It’s surprising, cause that show you how the business run. They have concerts and stuff and they be talking about different groups and how good they are and all they be doing is playing somebody else’s stuff, you know. They play a lot of Jimmy Reed, a lot of B.B. King, and they try to copy The Temptations and all that, you know. Nobody’s being themself anymore. If I wanted to do something like that, I could have been in better shape than I am now. They always wanted me to come out and play, but they never wanted to do it my way. And I couldn’t do it their way. Couldn’t and I wouldn’t do it their way. Cause it ain’t right.
Where were your parents from? Were they from Detroit?
My dad was from Cleveland, Mississippi. I haven’t told you about my dad?
No.
My dad was from Cleveland, Mississippi… You know my last name is not Smith.
It’s not?!
No.
What is it??
I’m getting ready to tell you something that I ain’t talked about. When my dad was a kid, I guess he must have been about 10 years old. He was down there in Cleveland, Mississippi, working in the field, you know, him and his grandmother. His grandmother had been a slave. And he was born right out of, just when they was coming out of it… But my grandma, his grandparents, they were right out of the cotton field. And one day he was out in the field working. He was with my grandmother, his grandmother, my great great great-grandmother. His grandmother would always take him out in the field with her working because that’s how she babysitted him, you know. And she’d be working…He was raised out there… But this one time, they were out there in the field working. I guess it was one of the old masters. But anyway, he rolled up on us in a wagon, you know. And he wanted grandma to go do something. She was old, you know, slow, and she couldn’t…she wasn’t moving fast enough. He jumped off the wagon and slapped her. And my dad was working out there with a hoe. You know what a hoe is? He turned around and beat the man in the head with the hoe. He was 10 years old then. And my people were always masons, you know. And they took him and put him in a wagon, took him to Memphis, right straight to Memphis. And they got him to Memphis, they gave him to another one of our relatives that was in Memphis, you know, wasn’t too far from Cleveland, Mississippi. They took him to St. Louis. They took my dad to St. Louis, and when they got to St. Louis, they took him to a friend that they had in St. Louis. They called him Prophet Smith. He was a dance instructor. He was a hoofer, you know….He took my dad and put him in school in St. Louis under his name…Smith. Because if they had caught my dad by doing some stuff like that, I wouldn’t be here today. He stayed in St. Louis for a while, a couple of years, and then he left St. Louis because he didn’t like the school system. He used to like to work also, you know. And he went to Chicago. He went to Chicago to work in the mills, you know, stockyards. And he worked in the stockyards for a while. And then he left the stockyards and he came to Detroit because they had automobile factories in the area paying more money. Plus they had the show bars and everything in Chicago and Detroit. That’s why there’s so many blues players in Chicago. Because when they left the South, that’s where they went.
Oh, the path of the blues.
They took the blues. Because the people that was working, they worked the dogshit out them till the weekend. Then the weekend they let them out. And then they would always find a juke joint to go to, you know, and they’d get out and hear some music. You know one thing about musicians. They talk about musicians. “Man, all them musicians is just alcohol, dope fiends” or something like that. You see what people don’t understand here. When the blues musicians left Mississippi, and they would go to them different towns when they were working and got gigs, there wasn’t too many places that they went where they could stay in hotels. They could play some of the dance halls, but they couldn’t live in there. They couldn’t eat in there, They had to eat outside on the back porch. So it wasn’t unusual for every town that they’d slept in, they would have some women they’d be dealing with, or they would know some cousins or something. And they’d end up at one of their houses, you know, and they would have their fun. But that’s how they got along, you know.
How did your dad meet your mom?
There in the church. My mother was there with her great-grandmother. I got some pictures of her too, I’ll show you… My grandmother had five kids, three of them were by the master. And that’s why when you see the pictures of them, you see I got some aunts about your color.
Yeah?!
Photo of Margart and Cousins
Yeah, I’m serious, I’m serious. They had been down in Indiana, you know. Indiana was known for that at that time, the clubs, you know. My aunt Margaret was a dancer. She was one of them line dancers. Yeah, they went all over. She went all over. It was funny because her brother was darker than me, you know. And there were a lot of places where they didn’t want her brother to be. But he got to go to all them places because when my Aunt Margaret went, she always said that he was her man, ya know, her worker who took care of her…and stuff so they let him come, you know. So he got to see a lot of shit, you know. But, I mean, that’s the way it was, you know. That’s the way it was. It was terrible. It was terrible.
You know I remember when we come to Detroit, The Brewster Projects. My family was the fourth family that moved into the Brewster Projects.
The fourth? Wow, you were one of the first ones in there.
Yeah, yeah, Brewster Projects. Yeah, they used to call my dad the Roving Photographer. He took pictures for the Chronicle. Yeah, he took pictures, you know, in all the clubs that were downtown. He was doing all the clubs. But it was cool. During the depression, during the depression, boy, you had to have stamps to get sugar, you know. And it was a bitch. But you know what? When I think about it, I never, I didn’t even know that there was a depression that people didn’t have any, you know. And the reason I didn’t know it was because when my dad was laid off from Briggs automobile factory. (Briggs is Chrysler now.) When he got home from work, we go to Canada. And we go fishing. We go fishing. My dad had coon dogs. On the weekend he’d go out to the woods, and he hunted and he caught squirrels and rabbits and stuff. I was, shit, when I was like 7, 8 years old I was sitting around the pail, skinnin the coon. You know my dad was skinnin the coon. That’s how I come up. That’s how I come up. I think that’s one of the reasons why, even today, I don’t have a whole lot of friends. I have people I know, you know, but I don’t associate with a whole lot of people. You know?
I find that hard to believe. You got a lot of people, right?
No, I mean, understand me. I got a lot of people that know me. And I know I got a lot of people that I have associated with. But because you associate with a person…doesn’t mean that they’re your friend.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
You know, you can be with them every single day. And one day you look up and you say, damn. And you realize, you know. But if you know that on the spot, you just pick the people that you associate with. You pick the people that you want to associate with. I picked you.
Likewise.
I picked Andy.
(Buddy gestures to my husband, sitting in the other room.)
Andy used to sit up and talk all the time. See? But it’s because I never had time for a whole lot of bullshit. You walked into my life one time.
(He looks at me intently.)
I’m gonna tell, you’re very important to me too. I’m gonna tell you this. Remember when I ran back into you on Belle Isle?
At Hipster Beach?
Yeah, and Mariah was there. And Mariah just took to you. You taught her how to swim. And that was good because hell, I didn’t do no damn swimming. You know, I ain’t going to drown. You know what I mean? But I didn’t do a whole lot of swimming. I learned how to swim when I went into the military. Because they were taking us overseas…. We was going on the ship so if you didn’t know how to swim. And we could all swim. I was telling them “yeah I can swim”. Shit, I could never swim. And I stayed at Joe Louis Arena. Yeah, I stayed there. Me and my dad was in there all the time. They had a shooting gallery down there. He’d take me over there and we’d shoot rifles and shit. But I didn’t do no swimming. When we’d go fishing up in Canada, I’d jump off in the water. I wasn’t going to drown, but my dad didn’t come in there and get me. He said, “you jumped in there, now get yourself out.” And I was able to do it.
Buudy’s mother, Emmy Lou, with Uncle and Buddy’s son, Charles Jr.
Do you think your dad could swim?
Oh, hell yeah. Oh, hell yeah. You know I didn’t appreciate my dad. I wouldn’t say, didn’t appreciate him. But I didn’t realize my dad was a helluva man. He took pictures during the time when they had the automobile plants, that the union wars was going on. I can remember, we was in the projects. I can remember my dad was gone for about 3 to 4 days. I didn’t know where he was cause my dad didn’t do that. He went to work and he went home. And when he did come home, he had on this old white shirt, blood was still all over it. He had been there fighting them union busters. He was a union man. He was a tough old man. He didn’t take no shit out of nobody. One thing that I heard him say, “somebody better watch out.” Then he said, “ain’t this a bitch?” You know he was upset. But he was mad. He was my dad, my dad, my dad.
I was fuckin around gettin high. At a young age. Getting blasted, I mean, getting blasted. And I had a lot of girlfriends, you know. Musician, you know. Oh, I had a whole lot of girlfriends. And I come home one day and was sitting in the living room. I was just sitting there, high as a motherfucker, nodding. And when I looked up, he was looking at me, shaking his head. He was just shaking his head, looking at me.
That look of disappointment.
Yeah boy, that’s my dad, my dad, my dad, my dad. But he took care of me. He taught me how to garden, fish, hunt, drive a truck. Hell, I was driving a truck when I was 14 years old. I had a crew. My dad was the first landscaper, licensed landscaper, Black licensed, in Michigan. He had two trucks. And I would drive one crew. And he would drive the other.
What’d your mama think of that?
Shit, my mama from the South, baby. We would work. We come up working. Yeah, there wasn’t no fuckin’ around, you know. Shit.
Where was your mom from in the South?
Actually, from Georgia. But she spent some time in Louisiana too. In New Orleans, you know. The woman I loved, the woman I loved. This one I did, I did, I did. Sandy. You don’t know nothing bout her, do you?
You told me about Sandy. A lot actually.
Yeah she saved me cause I was doing some stupid shit. She told me, “boy, what the hell you doing?”. But anyway. That’s about how I come up.
When did you start playing music?
Well, I recorded my first record when I was 11 or 12 with Bobo Jenkins. That was Mother Goose Blues.
Do you remember the song?
I don’t remember playing it, but it went like
Jack and Jill went up a hill to get some water
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And wasted all the water
Jill ran up to him and said
What can I do?
He say you better call Mother Goose
Cause Mother Goose knows what to do
This was you 8 years old, you were on a record singing this?
I wrote that!
You wrote it? That’s awesome.
Yeah, I was going to Chaney School, and they had a good music thing going on there, during that time, you know. And I did a thing for Chaney.
I’m walking through the halls
inside these big old walls.
I realized how grateful we should be.
Something like that, you know. And I was writing them down. And then us kids sung at that school. During that time, a man came out and he heard me. He started talking to me and talked to my dad. He wanted to know if it’d be alright if I come down there to the studio, you know. Jenkins, Jenkins, Jenkins. I’d go down there and sit in there. Muddy Waters, and all them come through there. He knew all of them and I would listen to them, you know, listen to them. Yeah. What was his name? Me and him sung together for a while. He sung Mustang Sally. I can’t remember his name. And that was my buddy. Anyway, he once told me. He used to call me Bud X. He’d say, “Bud X”… You got to know his name! Sir Mack Rice! Me and Mack was close, you know. He’s one of the best musicians that I’ve ever met and been getting along with his people. Doing that music, him and Coleman Young was good friends. And Coleman Young gave him a contract to do the streets, you know. With asphalt, they called in big trucks and they laid all that shit in the streets. And then he was singing too, with Stax Recording Company. But anyway, he told me one day. We played the Fox Theater. You remember that? When we was at the Fox Theater. You don’t remember that?
Nuh-uh. When was that?
This was a while ago. We played it. It was me and Bettye Lavette and uh… Anyway, the place was packed. When I mentioned his name, you know who I’m talking about. He had this traveling show. He went all over the United States and he did that music thing, you know. But anyway, he told me one day we was writing that song out at Jeff Reynolds house. And he said, “Bud,” we was coming out of there and he say “You know what, you can sing man” He say, “and you play the piano a little but you know what you ought to do?” He say, “don’t work with none of these bands.” He said, “you learn to play…just play man, just play and do it like that.” He said, “that’s when you’ll have your thing together”. So that’s what I’m trying to do, you know, that’s what I’m trying to do.
What was it like being a musician in Detroit in the 60s and 70s?
It was fun. I mean, it was, shit. Everybody that was doing anything was like from that area. You know? Joe Weaver, he’s right around the corner. You know, uh, Stevie Wonder came from right there on Breckenridge, and he was right around the corner from me. Johnny Bassett, he was right up the street. Who else? Willie Pringle, he was from over in there. It was a lot of musicians who came from over in there. And we didn’t have nothing else to do, see. It wasn’t like we go home and look at television. You know, we go to the show sometimes, Cass, or my dad would take me to the show up there on Hastings. And the Warfield, I’d do that. But I mean that we, as kids, we didn’t have a whole lot of different things to do but be out in the street, you know. We used to go twice a week, the school doors would be open. You could go to the gym and do anything you wanted to do in the school. And we would go up in the bathroom and sing in the bathroom because it had that echo. Yeah, I sang with a lot of them. You know, a whole lot of them. I come up with them, you know. We played music. You know, we played music.
Edited interview: https://
Charles “Buddy” Smith is a lifelong musician, internationally recognized as the “Northern Soul Legend of Detroit”, locally celebrated as a beloved vocalist. He lives in Metro Detroit with his granddaughter. Follow him @charlesbuddysmith. For bookings, email charlesbuddysmith@gmail.com or call 313-466-4228.
Laura Bailey “LB” Brandon is a poet, trombonist, and social service specialist. Visit her website www.awakestilldreaming.com to read more of her work and connect with Ride With Purpose, a community activism-oriented bike ride she started with her husband, Andy. (Their love story started while making music as members of Buddy’s band, Umoja.)
