My grandfather always had really nice console radios. He had one made of bakelite in his office and a really nice wooden one with a phonograph at home.
He was born into a world where, even if he had a radio, nobody broadcast into Attala County, Mississippi. He liked music, but if he wanted to hear it, he either had to go to church or find somebody who could play or sing something. His mother played piano, and his father learned to play the mouth organ because he only had one hand.
Recorded music was never really a part of Granddaddy's life until he went to Millsaps in Jackson. In Jackson, there were two radio stations, and a man named Werlein from Germany, who lived in Vicksburg bought a store in New Orleans and opened one on Capitol Street in Jackson, next door to the Office Supply Company, that his brother would eventually purchase. Werlein's was famous for selling instruments and sheet music, but they also sold records that Granddaddy loved. Eventually, the Emporium took over the record sale business, but it started at Werlein's.
He worked summers and weekends for the railroad and saved his money enough so that he could splurge on a wind-up victrola, which he used to entertain his fraternity brothers and woo his lady fair. The KA house soon developed a reputation because it had music and even allowed dancing, although it was against the rules.
After college, Grandaddy stayed in Jackson because his father, Cap, had died. Bad crops and hard economic times forced his mother to sell the family farm and use what money was left to buy a small house in Jackson, where Grandaddy lived with his mother and little sister. He kept his job at the railroad, then got one at the post office. His older brother would soon borrow money on his burial life insurance policy and open a business selling pencils, writing slates, blackboards, and student desks to the schools in Mississippi. Grandaddy would join soon after as the head of shipping and receiving.
As Mississippi grew and enacted a free textbook law, my Uncle Boyd petitioned the publishers to set up a depository in Jackson, adjacent to his school furniture and supply business, in a building that's now Cathead Vodka. In return for eight percent of the textbook contract sale price, the new School Book Supply Company would store and ship all the textbooks made available for the children of Mississippi.
As Millsaps grew, Grandaddy had the idea that he could open a small store in the old commons building where he could sell the students their textbooks so they didn't have to mail order them. He could also sell Coca-Cola, which was then being bottled in Jackson, penny candy, and Barq's Rootbeer, along with pencils, pens, and notebooks.
Since we were selling cold Cokes and candy, students began taking to hanging out at the bookstore and socializing. Granddaddy drove to Memphis and purchased a coin-operated machine that played single songs for a penny. The kids called it a Juke Box. Juke, being a negro word for businesses with bad reputations where the blues would play, Millsaps being a school for good Christian white children, the box soon became contentious. To make matters worse, word soon came to Grandaddy and my Uncle Boyd that the man they hired to run the bookstore was allowing the students to actually dance. Dance in front of each other!
Grandaddy smiled, remembering the days when he and the other KA's would dance in front of each other to the music coming from his wind-up victrola. Uncle Boyd's reaction was a little more dire. He loved music. In the days to come, he would be the one to announce the formation of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra, an organization that still exists but is now the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. Boyd knew that these angry voices wouldn't be easily placated. Eventually, the Bishop came calling, and the days of music and dancing at Millsaps were over--but not for long.
When Granddaddy died, I discovered his record collection in a cabinet in the den he had built onto his St. Ann Street house. Most of them were seventy-eights, so they wouldn't play on my turntable, but I could read the labels. He seemed to enjoy Tommy Dorsey and Enrico Caruso, but he also had a copy of Pigmeat Markham singing "Open The Door, Richard" and another of Andy Griffith telling a story about Football.
My brother inherited Grandaddy's love for music. He was determined to play the guitar and asked Santa for several good ones. He became a rabid devotee of a radio station called WZZQ and one of the best customers of a new company that sold phonograph records called "Bee Bop," which opened next to the Capri Theater but moved to Maywood Mart.
We don't really understand what happened to him, but something made his mind break. Attempts to take guitar lessons bounced off him as he began to believe they were secretly working against him. One day, one of the Disk Jockeys from his beloved WZZQ called my Daddy, concerned about the things my brother would say to him when he called in requesting music late at night. He was concerned that Jimmy was losing touch with reality. We would eventually find out that he was. Other friends would call, and my parents began moving my brilliant brother into devoted mental health care.
Jimmy never learned to play the guitar properly. He could sort of improvise and sometimes took his Christmas money and recorded singles, with the producers at Malaco making something sensible of the tracks he laid down. When he died, he left behind cases and cases of records bought at Bee Bop, a monument to his love for music, and the tragedy of how he lost touch of it.
My music comes almost entirely from my computer. I learned computers because I had trouble reading. They opened up entire worlds for me. There's a tiny woman named Alexa who lives in my computer and will play any song I want on demand. Dancing is optional. As I type this, she's playing a little song I like by Juliette Gréco. I've never had a flesh-and-blood girlfriend who was this obedient or understanding. Alexa's great, but she's crap at holding hands at the movies, so she's out.
One day, my Alexa music will be archaic and quaint, but, I'm pretty sure my french Jazz artists will still be listened to, and I'm very sure there will still be dancing at Millsaps.
