Hot Platters: Bongo Joe

 

Track List: 

1.      I Wish I Could SIng 

2.      Innocent Little Doggie 

3.      Cool It 

4.      Listen At That Bull 

5.      Transistor Radio 

6.      Eloise 

7.      Dog Eat Dog

 

2023 Jazz Fest, May 4, 2023 – Kelly Waltemath Wall, Greater New Orleans  Realtor

Years ago, The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival celebrated its 50th Anniversary and I was immediately reminded of the one and only Bongo Joe!  Ah, Bongo Joe... the very name conjures up a deep well of memories for me. Otherwise known as George Coleman, Bongo Joe was an eccentric musician from San Antonio, Texas whose "act" consisted of playing empty oil drums while regaling folks with his off-the-wall lyrics.  This slab of vinyl is one of my all-time favorite record albums.

At one point in my life, during the 80's, Sweet Loretta and I would always go down to New Orleans to attend the annual Jazz and Heritage Festival. Every year, who would we see just outside the gates of the racetrack where the festival was held? Bongo Joe, of course! Pounding on his oil drums, his fez perched precariously on his bobbing head, eyes alive as he shouted out his free verse. It don't get much better than that folks! 

 

BONGO JOE INTERVIEW

Larry Skoog:    You told me that you were born in Florida was it? You have to say yes so they can get it. I can’t record a nod, George. When? 1923?

Bongo Joe:           Yeah.

Larry Skoog:    Where did you first start banging on the drum, on the can there?

Bongo Joe:           Houston.

Larry Skoog:    In Houston? What gave you the idea for it?

Bongo Joe:      Just trying to get a job as a drummer, and I couldn’t get the job unless I had my own drums. I tried to make a loan from several sources to buy drums. ….. my first job, and couldn’t get the money so I got some cans and fixed them up like drums and started playing on street corners in Houston.

Larry Skoog:    When was that?

Bongo Joe:        That was in the early 50s.

Larry Skoog:   I see these Jamaican guys beating on these things. Did that influence you, or did you think about that at all?

Bongo Joe:       No. I was doing it long before I ever heard of it.

Chris Strachwitz:    Did your parents or anybody in your family ever play music?

Bongo Joe:        I ain’t got no parents. They’re all dead.

Larry Skoog:    So it was just something you sort of felt like doing then. I imagine you knew you had a talent for it.

Bongo Joe:         Mm-hmm (affirmative). I always did like the rhythmic-type music, such as xylophone, piano, drum. Anything you bang on, that’s what I always liked.

Chris Strachwitz:   Did you get most of your songs by just observing people?

Chris Strachwitz:   How do you make them up?

Bongo Joe:      Make them up as I go along. Got my first time yet to do the same one twice the same way.

Larry Skoog:    Well, they’re pretty good songs. Is there one thing or another that you particularly like to sing about?

Bongo Joe:        Tell you the truth, no.

Larry Skoog:    Do you use the songs to tell-

Bongo Joe:       First thing come to my mind.

Larry Skoog:    You can make it as loud as you want. What did you do for a living before you started banging on the drums?

Bongo Joe:      Piano.

Larry Skoog:    You just sort of travel around and find a place-

Bongo Joe:         No, I try to stay in one place.

Larry Skoog:    Try to stay in one place. You said you’d lived in Houston for a while, then Galveston, and then Fort Worth.

Bongo Joe:       Yeah. I’d go to Houston for the winter. That went on for about six or eight years, and then I started going to Fort Worth. That lasted about five years. I was considering Galveston as home base.

Larry Skoog:    Until they built the old folks’ home.

Chris Strachwitz:     You made too much noise for them, or what?

Larry Skoog:    Driving the crowds out.

Bongo Joe:        I had to stop playing at 10:00 every night.

Larry Skoog:    And down there, that’s just when people are getting started down there.

Bongo Joe:        People didn’t have no where else to go, and that’s when the crowds got big.

Larry Skoog:    He played down there in front of the gift shop o n Seawall. I used to see him … I used to see you when I was going fishing and things like that, and going back and things like that. You’d be always setting up and getting ready to start just I was coming back from fishing. A couple times I stopped to listen.

Chris Strachwitz: Have you ever gone back to Florida and the beaches there; have you played there?

Bongo Joe:       Uh-uh (negative).

Larry Skoog:    Consider yourself a Texan now, huh. That’s groovy. We need more good drum beaters in Texas.

Bongo Joe:        I found it to be the best state I ever been in since I been big enough to know about them.

Chris Strachwitz:   Do you have any strong feelings about things that you feel you want to express?

Bongo Joe:      Something starting up here, I’m positive.

Larry Skoog:  You seem to want to express yourself through your music, and you seem to want to tell people-

Bongo Joe:      There’s a bigger percentage of it, but I refuse to ever mention it in words.

Larry Skoog:   I know your songs always deal with the human condition, how people treat each other.

Bongo Joe:      See, you don’t say how good you can shine a pair of shoes by … I can make them look so you can see y ourself. You don’t understand, and I’ll exercise it. See what I mean?

Larry Skoog:   Oh Yeah.

Larry Skoog:   Who would be some of your favorite musicians?

Bongo Joe:       Right now?

Larry Skoog:   I mean of all time.

Bongo Joe:      Dave Brubeck, Stan Kenton, Erroll Garner, Fat Wallace, Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges,  Flip Phillips, Dizzy Gillespie, and this Mexican guy, I can’t think of his name right now.

Chris Strachwitz:    The good jazz orchestras.

Larry Skoog:    Yeah, the guys that are really trying to do new, and yet solid, jazz.

Larry Skoog:   Right. That’s the way I feel about it too. I don’t like the stuff that’s real new, and I don’t like the stuff that’s real, real old. I like the guys like … Like Ellington is my favorite of all time. The kind of guy that’s trying to present something more than just sounds, you know. A feeling.

Bongo Joe:     The newness of anything …… the development of the thing,  or musicians.

Larry Skoog: That’s right.

Bongo Joe:    That is the newness. What makes it new is originally from wherever it comes from right then.

Larry Skoog:  That’s right. It’s not just trying to mix any different. Because then anybody make it.

Bongo Joe:      No music can be new no longer than one minute after it’s been played.

 

Bongo Joe

Here's the skinny on this unique musician, from Jame Lien's review in the CMJ New Music Report: “Born in Haines, Florida, in 1923, like many others he gravitated to Houston, Texas (known as `Baghdad On The Bayou' because of its booming oil business) as a young man. Somewhere in the late '40s, Coleman volunteered to fill the drummer's chair in a local band, improvising around his lack of a trap set by building his own kit out of empty oil drums and tin cans. Having to lug a 55-gallon Texaco Fire Chief barrel from gig to gig hindered his musical progress through normal professional channels, but he quickly turned to free-lancing on the streets, playing on popular tourist piers and heavily trafficked places like Seawall Boulevard in Galveston, working his way up to legendary gigs at the San Antonio World's Fair and later the New Orleans Jazz Fest. Whether draping his drums with an American flag or washing them in swirls of psychedelic green and red paint, there's something beyond the typical street-corner busker in Bongo Joe's persona festive, unbridled quality that isn't just musical, but draws on a tradition of pure entertainment, with elements from sideshows, comedy and even the circus. The approach is primal, but not primitive: Bongo Joe drums on his oil cans with a thunderous, tympani-like effect, while discoursing rambling, insightful and hilariously funny lyrics that are often times more stories than songs. As Joe himself put it, `I rap but not that bullshit they're putting down now. I play fundamental beat music.'”

"Coleman was engaged by the Detroit jazz scene, and began his career by accompanying local musicians on piano, including Sammy Davis Jr. In the 1940's, at Houston, he spent time in bands at a number of locales. Here, for the first time, he played an unconventional percussion instrument – unconventional in that he fabricated a makeshift drum kit out of 55-gallon oil drums. How he developed his drumming technique and tuning over the years resulted in a unique and novel sound.  Despite more lucrative offers by established venues, for 15 years, Coleman preferred playing on the streets of Galveston; another 15 years were spent in San Antonio where his nickname "Bongo Joe" was originated. The latter city was where Coleman recorded his only album, George Coleman: Bongo Joe, in 1968 with producer Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records; his work remains in print to this day.  A low-profile but well-respected musician, Coleman occasionally participated at more prominent events such as the Hemis Fair, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and Gerald Ford's presidential campaign in 1976. In 1991, he appeared on the PBS program Almost Live from the Liberty Bar.  Coleman's music career ended abruptly in the early 1990s when he was diagnosed with diabetes and kidney disease. He died on December 19, 1999, age 76."  (Revolvy.com)

 

Chris Strachwitz (Arhoolie Records)

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Chris Strachwitz, the owner of the Arhoolie Record label: "Mack McCormick played me these tapes that he had made and he actually issued one number under a label from England: 77 Records. It was an amazing song by this guy who banged away on an oil drum, and he sang about the mighty dollar.  I just happened to walk across the damn bridge in San Antonio, I believe it was in the Seventies, and he was playing right downtown. My little portable machine gave out, but a good friend of mine, Larry Skoog, lived in San Antonio with his family. He said, “Chris, come over to my house and we can record him there on your Magnecord machine.” I didn’t know any place to record him, you see. And at least there we had Larry’s children as an audience.  I think he calls himself “The Original Rapper.” I think I mention it in the notes. Anyway, I’m sure glad I recorded him. He was a really amazing improviser. He would comment on the world around him. That’s really what all these guys did, in a way. He would just put together simple phrases where others had these extraordinary stories to tell." (Oxford American magazine)

 

“If you can have an influence to cause people to see on a level, you can get yourself out of a situation, and when you get out of the situation you don’t have to worry about somebody else trying to connive or scheme a way to throw you right back in it, because you’re out of it truly. You ain’t out of it through a scheme.” – George “Bongo Joe” Coleman, (November 28, 1923 – December 19, 1999)

Bongo Joe

LONG LIVE BONGO JOE!

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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