And don't believe the hype about Elvis's "All Right Mama," Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" or even Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner's "Rocket 88." Rock and roll was already a few years old by the time each of those tunes was recorded. Go listen to the competing versions of "Good Rockin' Tonight" by Roy Brown and Wynonie Harris, as well as the rest of those men's late-'40s output, and then tell me it's not rock and roll. (Or, for that matter, Houston guitarist Goree Carter's 1949 recording of "Rock Awhile," which the late New York Times pop critic Robert Palmer believed to be the first real rock song.)
Houston's own Jimmy "T-99" Nelson -- born in Philadelphia in either 1928 or 1919 -- is one of the last living embodiments to that most fertile era, a guy who predates and outlived Elvis P. long enough to win the effusive praises of Elvis C. (Though he's much younger, I would lump Dr. John in a similar artistic category.) A friend and protégé of rock pioneer Big Joe Turner who has recorded for Modern Records, Rounder and his own label in his 64-year professional career, Nelson creates music ranging from suave blues to highball-sipping pop-jazz standards to raucous old-time rock and roll, all of it infused with his amazing songwriting sensibility. (And all of it on offer on his new aptly titled album, The Legend.)
Just bring up Nelson to Roger Wood, sometime Press contributor and award-winning author/chronicler of the Houston blues scene, and listen to the enthusiasm in his voice. "Here's what I love about Jimmy," he says, the smile audible over the phone. "You go over to his house, and he's 80-something years old, and he's sitting there at that cluttered table of his in his wife-beater, just moving words around. Still writing, man. I can only hope to have that kind of dedication -- I imagine when I get to his age I'll just be sitting around drooling."
And on the scorching afternoon when I arrive at Nelson's house -- a brick duplex over where the Museum District slowly transforms into the Third Ward, it's just as Wood predicted, right down to the wife-beater. Though heavy-set, and suffering from a bum knee, Nelson still looks fit enough to pass for a former prizefighter. He's even fitter mentally. His catlike eyes are windows into a mind as agile as that of few other men, be they his age or five decades younger.
And sure enough he's still moving those words around. He's got a big binder of them open now and he flips through the pages -- his lyrics are printed on them in huge typed letters, which is fitting because his Big Joe Turner-like voice delivers them aloud in a 28-point type as well.
He cracks open one of the Heinekens Racket brought along ("Thanks a lot," he says. "You're my kind of reporter!") and takes me through the pages. "I've got so many songs I sometimes forget some of 'em," he says. His speaking voice is just like his singing voice: mostly booming but with a little bit of a sweet trill to it. "Now here's a song. A friend of mine" -- bluesman Pete Mayes -- "owns the Double Bayou ranch, and I wrote a song about the Double Bayou Dance Hall there. I'm tryin' to find out what they have out there to eat, and I hear they have sweet potato pies…"
He flips a few pages and comes across the lyrics to a song by somebody else he wants to record. "Remember this one? [Sings] 'If I could be with you, one hour tonight.' "
I tell him no. "Come on, you've got to get hip now. That's an old song. Louis Armstrong did that many years ago. I've got to learn the phrasing of all the songs in this book here." He flips a few pages. "Here's 'My Wife's Outside Man.' It's too long, I've got to cut it short. When you've got a set of verses it's entirely too long, so what you need is a short intro, two verses at the top, guitar solo in the middle, one chorus and then two verses taken out -- that gives you about three minutes, 38 seconds. I'll have to arrange it like that, you see…And then use those extra lyrics for another song!"
