subject: Barbecue Sauce And The Blues [print this page] Back in the sixties, I was a disc jockey on an FM radio station. At that time, FM was not a big deal, and most station owners were looking for shows that would make money, and that's how underground, or free form radio got started. Anyway, I tried as hard as I could to find new and unusual music that couldn't be heard on mainstream radio, including old blues records, which at that time were influencing a generation of English musicians. My late night show was the only one in town playing real American blues, and I picked up quite a following. It became so successful, a local promoter arranged a blues concert featuring the musicians whose albums I played every night.
The day of the concert, the promoter called, and asked me to join him and the stars of the upcoming show for lunch. I was pretty nervous, even more so after introductions. My musical heroes were a bunch of tough, older black men who had pretty much done anything and everything there was to do in life, and I was a skinny, long haired kid from the suburbs. They were polite, and distant. They pretty much ignored me, as they resumed their conversation about, of all things, barbecue sauce. They all lived in Chicago, where they said good barbecue sauce
was as easy to find as bad luck.
I don't know why, but I really wanted to impress these guys, so after lunch, I searched high and low for some good barbecue sauce. I went to the parts of town that I'd never been to before, and had always been told to stay out of. Finally, after a couple of tense hours, I found a little stand in Five Points. The hand-painted sign said BBQ, there was chain link on the windows, and the whole place was about as large as a walk-in closet. It took me a minute or so to work up the nerve to go in, but I did, and ordered ribs, beans, and extra barbecue sauce. As I turned to leave, a huge black man blocked my way. I bobbed left, and weaved right, but he wouldn't let me pass.
"You're that kid with the blues on the radio, aren't you?" he demanded. I admitted it. "Good job" he replied, and walked away. After retrieving my heart from my boots, I left BBQ, and took the food to the theater, where I set up a little buffet in the green room, and went home.
Later that night, after the show, I got a phone call from my all-time blues hero. He told me there was a car waiting for me, and would I mind taking him to the place I got the barbecue sauce? I was ready in a heartbeat, and within a few minutes, we were at that little stand. Outside, he shook my hand, and thanked me for playing his records. He thought it was very kind of me to try and find some good barbecue sauce, which by the way, he really liked. We went inside, he bought me dinner, and treated me like an old friend. It was one of the best nights of my life, and for years after every time the blues men came to town, I would get a late night call, and a free dinner featuring the best barbecue sauce, this side of Chicago.
