*upbeat guitar plucking music gains* *upbeat guitar plucking music fades*
Oswald Colson: On the real dark nights, you can see them
bouncing from one post to the other.
That was the jack-o'-lanterns, people called them.
*laughs* I really think it was probably lightning bugs at that time, because you see, they're
poisoned so much now they don't have any of that no more today.
The lady over here would say, "Well, maybe that's the spirits."
They had a lady over here, Idelle Prudhomme, she used to cut the cards.
People lost their cattle or whatever, a man cheating on his wife, whatever, she could
tell them who it was and everything.
Teresa talked with another woman in Lafayette, and she did the same thing, and they were
talking.
Teresa never saw the woman before in her life.
She said, "Somebody in your family, your household, you guys got a shrine."
She said, "That thing needs to be put back together, and I mean soon."
And that's when Trace and Teresa got on it and they put it back together.
It was over in here, and then my great-grandmother gave it to my mom, and so it stayed in here
for all these years.
It was about from here to the bayou, from the bayou back to here.
And now it's down in Appaloosa, down there now.
People ask me, "Why do you know all this?
You only went to the eighth grade."
I say, "But everything somebody wrote," I say, "I read it.
But I didn't believe everything I read."
I didn't go to high school because my mama was out there with my dad, in the field, and
I started up there to go to school, and I thought if I start just thinking about it,
my mom out there killing herself in the field, I'm up here.
I just left.
I just walked out of class then come back here just to help my mama and help my dad.
But I love it.
You come from right here, and you go somewhere like New York or Chicago or somewhere, straight
from the country, it don't take you long to learn.
It don't take you long.
You get street smart in just about two week's time.
*laughs*
Oh, I never knew half of them.
Well there the ones, the Blind Boys I tell ya.
Yeah, mostly white guys come to that place.
Sometimes, someone black would play there.
Because, during that time, it was kind of, during the rock-and-roll coming in thing,
I remember Al Fury he played there a lot.
Dr. Roy, his son.
He played the piano.
And he had a band.
They'd get him all the time.
They could really play.
It was about four of them.
Four or five of them.
Yeah, he'd get different people all the time.
Like I say, he can afford to get them because they wasn't making that much.
You're making maybe five or ten dollars apiece.
The more you had in your band, the less you got paid.
*laughs* But like I say, you was really playing for the fun of it.
It wasn't about the money.
*laughs* It was quite an experience.
Like I said, while I was playing, I played music over here to this hall over here with
two older guys, me and a cousin of mine.
We had some good times over at the Friendly Place.
That's the second hall.
The first hall burned down.
This is the first one that was built.
That one was the first one that was built and then the Wright Brothers put up a hall,
which Sonny Jones already had a hall next to his store, down there.
It wasn't really a dance hall.
They had a jukebox.
I guess it was, at that time, when the in-laws had it.
Across the river, they put up two more halls.
None of them ever made it though.
Ashley Kirkland over here, Ashley Kirkland had a hall over there.
I was too young then but he got... but it was for black people over that one.
When he opened this place over here *laughs*, he said, "This is for Creoles" and they had
some people... cause these guys was white and they came in and he said, "This is for
Creoles."
They say, "What's Creole?"
He say, "I ain't never heard of that."
He said, "Well you can't come in."
*laughs* They've never even heard of it.
You don't know what it is.
They'd say, "Okay."
You ever heard of Woodstock?
I started that.
I was in Chicago.
We started there.
On Route 12 B, about a mile from the other hundred thousand.
That was the largest concert we’ve ever held.
In the 50s or 60s, it was very hard.
There were so many people.
You'd go to a studio, you'd be surprised.
The hall and the corridor was just full of guys wanting to record.
But you had nobody to support you.
You didn't have a manager or something like that.
And it wasn't like today.
Back then, you had a studio, we went to Chess record.
And so many people are playing their rock-and-roll music there.
You had to be very good.
You had to be very good at it back then.
And somebody might be listening to you, you know?
Because they'd go in there, let you record and it’d cost you so much to record, they
probably put that safe over here on the shelf just like they did in that movie, Cane River.
And they found it here just last year from 50 years ago.
But it was fun in the meantime.
We played music a long time up there.
I liked going up there.
Then we have to work too, so I was workin’.
It was good.
I enjoy it.
I'd go back and forth.
In '56, I went to Chicago.
California, '58 I went to Los Angeles.
So I stayed out there about a year and a half.
I worked on aircraft.
I had to ride a bus for two hours to get to work.
I'm tired when I get to work.
I said no.
This ain't going to work so back East again I went.
But I did that three different times.
I lived in California three different times.
One time, when I was in California I’d keep on and I go to that bar.
It was a piano bar and some guy is playing the piano.
So, he's playing one of Domino's numbers, Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
Boy, and he was killing it.
Oh my God, I couldn't stand it.
So I just started helping him.
He said, “Come on!
Come on!”
I start singing, you know?
He said, "You know it."
And I said, “Let me finish!”
That was really neat.
*laughs* The people thought I did great.
"What you got?"
I said, "Well, I'm working."
He said, "You want to do on Saturdays and Sundays with me?"
So I sang at a piano bar.
*laughs*
*upbeat guitar plucking music gains*
It was a good life.
I enjoyed it.
*laughs*
*upbeat guitar plucking music fades*