Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And Mike McToyer, how you doing? Good, how you doing Mike? I'm doing great.

You're still joining us I see. Yeah, you haven't gotten rid of me yet. Haven't chased you away yet? No.

No, that's a good thing, that's a good thing. Getting some good response from people, they're liking the new setup here. Not saying that there was anything wrong with the old setup, but they're liking the new one.

Yeah, you know, I heard the first one that I did and posted it to my Facebook page. Very good. I was pleasantly surprised.

And I actually confirmed that I don't like to hear the sound of my own recorded voice. That's why many, many people say that. When you hear it, you're like, that's not me.

No, that's no way. There's a filter on that. That's definitely right.

So we got another one of your choice entertainers joining us tonight. Yeah, we have downtown Charlie Brown, a purveyor of the fine Delta blues. Sounds good.

I love the Delta blues. I like all the blues. I don't care.

As long as it's blue. Absolutely. My favorite color too.

So maybe that's why. Well, that's good. Let's give them a listen.

All righty. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And this is Hollywood Mike Matoya 2.0. Hollywood.

That's what they call me, man. Wow. I'm impressed.

Even says it on a motorcycle vest. Yeah. You ever go to downtown Hollywood? No, I haven't.

Oh, you've been to any downtown? I've been to downtown, but no downtown Hollywood. No, no, no. Anybody named downtown? Nope.

No, no. Okay. So it's all original.

Okay. So who are we going to be talking to today? We are talking to downtown Charlie Brown. Aha.

I thought so. I see. I was trying to lead you on.

How are you doing, Charlie? I'm doing good. How are you guys doing? Doing real well. Real well.

Thanks for coming in. Glad to be here. Glad to be here.

So why don't you give us a little story about how this all started for you? Where did your music come from? When did you start playing? Well, you know, I guess it started, see, I guess when I was a kid, you know, back in New Jersey, grew up in New Jersey. And just like a lot of people went to church, singing the church choir from the time I was a little kid, stayed in church choir all the way through. Then in high school, actually junior high school, ninth grade, we started an R&B band that we called The Illusions.

And we were playing James Brown, Kool & The Gang, Earth, Wind & Fire, just anything that came up, top 40 stuff, whatever came up on the R&B chart. So we did all the way through high school. And then in college, just kind of got away from it in college a little bit and got back into it when I moved to Chicago back in 94.

And what I would do is go out to a club, try and book a gig. And after I book a gig, I go to an open mic and find some musicians and go play the gig. As opposed to finding a band, right? Right, right.

And then I did that for a while. And after a while, I had a band. OK.

And then I've been doing that since 94. The band's changed a little bit. For the most part, it's been pretty much the same for the last 15, 20 years almost.

OK. And so that's where you started the blues at that point? Yeah, I started the blues when I got here. And I actually got into blues boy in Kansas City.

There was this guy, Roy Searcy. He was a honky-tonk piano player. And I used to see him in a couple of places, Stroud's Restaurant and some other places.

And I liked what he played because I typically had played classical piano. But then the trumpet is what I was doing, the R&B stuff. And I asked Roy if he gave lessons.

And he says, I don't really give lessons. But if you want to, you can come over my house. So I go over to his house.

And he literally said, Charlie Brown, let me see what you can do. And I sat down, played a little bit on the piano. And then he looked at me and said, get up.

And he sat down, he played, said, OK, now I want to do that. And that's how he gave lessons. Because the first time I met you was at an open jam.

And you were playing the piano. Yeah. And then the first time I saw you perform was with an R&B band.

And then I don't think I saw you pull out a resonator and sing and do a solo performance until maybe about a year later. And you showed up with it. I don't know if you were just starting to learn it or you're just starting to get into it or whatever.

But you showed up with this resonator and a slide one day and just kind of played a style of music that people weren't used to seeing you play. I mean, was that a new thing about that time period? I'm probably going back about what, about five years ago or something like that? Very new, very new. Because I played piano, oh God, 94, 95, I guess, when I started playing here.

And I started playing the guitar seven years ago. Wow. Oh, wow.

Seven years ago, yeah. And I picked it, you know, I was, what happened was I was going to an open mic and I was taking my piano in. It's a hassle to take a piano and amp into an open mic and then play three songs.

So I stopped doing that. What I do instead is just go and sit in with whoever's playing the guitar on the open mic and just sing. The guy who was running it moved to Texas and the new guys there just couldn't play blues.

So in one night, three people said, hey, you'll learn to play the guitar. So that's what the third person said. I said, I guess I'll learn to play the guitar.

So I went to my wife, said, what do you want for Christmas? Buy me a guitar. So she bought me a guitar. That's about seven guitars ago now, you know? Yeah, yeah.

And it wasn't just any guitar. He said, I'm going to learn how to play guitar and I'm going to go out and I'm going to find a resonator. And I'm going to play the most difficult kind of guitar that you could probably teach yourself how to play because it's all about the touch.

And it's not just putting your finger down on a fret. And something nobody else plays. Right, right.

Absolutely. Yeah. And his guitars, I will tell you this.

You're seeing this thing right here. You folks can't see it, but it is made of some type of metal. It is a metal resonator.

It's made of steel. It is steel. And he's got several guitars.

And none of these resonators that he owns, you can just walk into a guitar center and buy off the wall because he's got some pretty unique ones, actually. Yeah. You got a favorite one? Actually, this one right here.

That one right there is your favorite? It is. It's called a Highway 61. OK.

And it's, let's just put it this way. It's my favorite acoustic resonator. OK.

It's a Highway 61. And it's interesting. It was made by a company called Republic out of Texas.

And Highway 61 signifies where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. Now, another resonator from them, it's called Clarksdale Special. Hot Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil on Highway 61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Is that the blue one? That's no, no, that's not the blue one. That's the blue one is a National. I have a blue one and a brown one.

Ah, OK. All right. And now my favorite electric resonator is my Brown National.

That's just a sweet guitar. But I play that primarily when I'm playing with the full band, as opposed to playing acoustic. So you so you're still playing with the full band.

So before. And are you just doing strictly blues? Are you doing other things to do in Samara? We do some R&B and every once in a while, but mainly blues. OK.

Yeah. I was talking to Vino Loud one day. I don't know if you know loud used to be.

I was Coco Taylor's band leader when when she was alive. And we were downtown Aurora during the Blues Fest when the Blues Fest was free in Aurora. And he was he was busking out in the street after Coco passed away.

So we're talking about how you play, you do a gig and somebody says, hey, you play R&B and then do another gig. Can you play jump blues? Can you do it? And you're just kind of this job and band that's trying to do whatever the venue wants you to play. So Vino Loud said something to me.

He said, Charlie Brown, nobody does Charlie Brown better than Charlie Brown. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna do blues. There's plenty of places to play blues.

I'll do some R&B, but I'm not going to just every time I play somewhere, try and change what I play to suit that particular venue because there's always somewhere else to play. After after doing that, I got many, many more gigs. Just focus on what I like to do.

Right. Because you know what? They don't they don't pay us enough money to change every time you play. But you know what? I'll tell you, everybody that has a story like that.

It's always a seasoned blues artist that will say almost that exactly the same thing. Nobody can nobody can do Charlie Brown the way Charlie Brown can do Charlie Brown. Right.

You know, throw in, you know, whatever name you want to put in there. And that's almost like it's almost like you're getting permission from somebody to just be who you are. And you're exactly right.

Yeah. You know, don't go in there and change your style every time you have a gig. Exactly.

You are exactly right. So you said you used to play into, you know, play a lot of jams and stuff. And you still kind of do that, too.

Oh, yeah. Some jam nights and stuff. Anybody really famous you played with in any of these jams? In the jams? I guess it depends on what you what you call famous.

I mean, Marty Samu just passed away. I've played with him. I don't know how many times.

But the most famous person has ever been on stage with us at a gig is a buddy guy. OK. So, you know, we're playing them buddy guys.

And a couple of times, like I said, probably four times, he's come on stage with us. So that is always a thrill. Oh, yeah.

I can imagine. And I tell you what, I think Buddy is better today. I like I like a better day than I did 20 years ago.

I mean, it's just like it's just like the older he gets, the better he gets. He's got it's amazing. It does seem that way.

It's amazing. The guys are really, really good. Really good.

So why not? Want to take a few minutes and let us hear what this guitar sounds like? Play a little tune. You can do that. I'm gonna do a song by actually one of my favorite songs is one by Muddy Waters.

It's the first song that he actually recorded. And I kind of like the story behind it, too. Because the first time we recorded, he was down in Mississippi and Alan Lomax was traveling around.

Mike's heard this story a hundred times. Alan Lomax is traveling around the South and he's recording what they call folk music. And it's recorded for the Library of Congress.

And so he comes on Muddy Waters Plantation with somebody from Fisk University. And, you know, they see Muddy and Muddy is selling. Muddy is playing the blues.

He's sharecropping and he's selling moonshine and making his most money on moonshine. So you figure he's assuming that he's getting arrested for selling moonshine. Because why else is a white guy coming on his plantation down in Mississippi? Alan Lomax did an amazing thing.

What he did when he asked Muddy for a drink of water, he drank water from the same glass Muddy was drinking from. This is 1941 in Mississippi. No white guy would ever do that.

And so Muddy recorded a couple of tunes for him. This one here, when he first recorded, he called it Country Blues. And then he recorded it again back, I think it was 1946 for Aristocrat Records.

And he called it I Feel Like Going Home. And kind of the same song. So this is going to be closer to the I Feel Like Going Home version.

Early in the evening, I feel like going home. Woke up this morning, all I had, all I had was gone. Early in the evening, I feel like going home.

Woke up this morning, all I, all I had was gone. Brooks went to the ocean, y'all now, ocean went to the sea. Leave my baby, y'all might as well come on and bury me.

Brooks went to the ocean, ocean went to the sea. Leave my baby, y'all might as well come bury me. Everybody's got a couple more verses to it, but that's kind of how it goes.

Really nice. You know, one thing about Charlie's performance, I always tease him about it a little bit. But I tease him strictly out of respect.

That is his show, by the way. You go to see downtown Charlie Brown with his resonator and his slide, and he's got this little pedal that he steps on to give himself a bass, you know, drum sound in the whole bit. And in between songs, he gives you a little bit of a history lesson about the blues.

Not only about the blues, but about American history in the South that goes along with it. So it's very entertaining. You should, you should actually go out and catch him one day.

I did last week. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right.

I was at the studio at the studio. That's right. That's right.

I'll host in the when they flip flopped the jam. That's right. Yeah, that's right.

That's where that's where we talked to Charlie and had him come in. Oh, yeah. So who's your favorite artist? Who do you really like to like to play? You know, I'd love to play Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters.

Don't part my two favorite. Yeah. Just a Mississippi Fred McDowell, Johnny Hooker, a lot of the old blues guys, guys from the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, stuff like that.

Old Delta guys, my favorite. Now, with the full band, when I'm on the keys, I love to do a little bit of Jerry Lee Lewis. You know, some some some Charles Brown, the old Charles Brown from used to play Driftin' Driftin' and Merry Christmas, Baby.

Some of that kind of stuff. BB King. So depending on what I'm going to get on the piano with, but the full band are doing acoustic stuff.

OK. Yeah. What about original music? Original music, you know, I model my music on a slide, a couple of songs after Muddy Waters.

I did some jump blues stuff that I do on the piano. Usually, usually most of the stuff. Well, not most.

I said a couple of songs I do. I teach school, but I can't I can't play them in the school. But those are most of my piano stuff.

Have you recorded anything? Have you got any? You know, I've had some CDs I've recorded just to sell at gigs and so forth. Right. But I'm actually in the process of trying to actually put some original stuff down now because the stuff that I've done before just been just covers.

OK. So this would be the first time I've actually done an original stuff. Very nice.

Very nice. That almost done? The songs are. Yeah.

But I was, you know, kind of sad. But I was actually getting had just talked to Marty and we're going to do some stuff together on that Thursday before before he passed away. So that kind of, you know, put a little monkey wrench in and, you know.

Right. So sometime next year. Sometime next year.

Excellent. Very good. Yeah.

Have you talked to anybody else about playing on the record other than Marty? You know, I was working with a guy down in North Carolina, but we were having issues with doing doing a lot of stuff through Zoom and so forth. So I'm actually I'm actually looking for a studio and looking for somebody to work with, work with me on it now. Well, if you own a studio out there, downtown Charlie Brown is looking for you, is looking for you.

Yes, he is. How about one of your originals? Can you play one of those for us? Yeah. So it's going to be.

I have to retune it to. But like the older guys, I tend to play the same open keys that they did. This one I'm about to do.

During the summer, I was actually saying during the pandemic, we were locked inside. I was listening to Muddy Waters play a song. My home was in the Delta.

And my home was Marshtown, New Jersey. It's not a Delta. So I was going to learn it.

And then I decided I'd change it around a little bit. And it's in Muddy Waters style, but it's called My Heart is in the Delta. Well, that's OK, because Creedence Clearwater Revival made an entire career and they'd never been to the bayou anywhere.

So those guys were from San Francisco. That's right. Someone was born on the bayou, but not them.

My heart is in the Delta, down by that old Ross road. My heart is in the Delta, down by that old Lawson road. But I live in Chicago.

That's where the love can go. Born in New Jersey, raised in Morristown and Cheney. Born in New Jersey, raised in Morristown and Cheney.

But the blues is in Chicago. That's where I'm gonna stay. Music from our fathers, music from our mothers too.

Music from our fathers, music from our mothers too. They told us stories, the things they were forced to do. My heart is in the Delta, down by that old Lawson road.

My heart is in the Delta, down by that old Ross road. I live in Chicago. That's where the bluesmen go.

Very nice, very nice. That's downtown Charlie Brown, educating us on some classic country blues. You know, that music's got to come from the Delta, because you can't say you were born at the confluence of the Chicago River.

That just wouldn't make it. Now, maybe if you were born near Bubbly Creek, Debbie. Right, right, right, right.

What I love about that sound, in fact, we had the Fabulous Kings here last week. Vic, you know Vic. Oh, yeah.

And he said something that I knew to be true, but I'd never heard him put it quite this way before. He said, the sound of the blues came out of necessity more than just a desire. You know, people came from the cotton fields and moved to Chicago, and next thing you know, they have to electrify, right? Right, right.

They didn't have the money to buy the biggest, baddest amp that was in the market. They had the money to buy the smallest, teeny little, tiny little amps, but they had to compete with drums and bass and everything else. So they turned these things up real loud, and that's where the breakup came from the amps and the speakers.

And then after years of being frowned upon, it suddenly became the sought-after sound, you know? And that's why I think it's so important for people who want to play rock and roll, want to learn more about the blues, to learn a little bit about the Delta Blues, because that sound that you're getting from that slide and that resonator is what inspired a lot of people to plug in guitar and that went to amp, and that's the sound that they wanted to get out of that amplifier. You know, it's interesting you talk about they didn't have much money because you know, who really kept the Delta Blues alive was Sears. Oh, yeah.

Because most of the guitars that they bought, when they wanted their first guitar was a used Sears guitar. They could get those cheap guitars. They'd order them and they'd come through the mail.

Plus, if they were in the South, someplace they couldn't buy a guitar because of all the racism and so forth. Right, right. So yeah, Sears, thank them for the Delta Blues.

I read a biography on Buddy Guy one time, I think it said something there, his first guitar that I don't know if his mother or his grandmother bought for him, it only had four strings, you know. So he learned to play with just four strings. He couldn't afford to buy a string.

Right. Well, you know, Buddy Guy talks about how what he used to do, because most of the guys, they learned to play on what they call a diddly bow. And that's that one string guitar that originated in West Africa and so forth.

And so what Buddy Guy, I heard him say that what he would do is he would go to his screen porch and take the strings off, take the wire off a screen, screen porch and actually use that maybe against a piece of wood or something. And he jokes around and says, maybe joking, maybe truthfully, he took so many wires off, all of a sudden mosquitoes started coming in. I'm so embarrassed about doing that, you know.

Right, right. But a lot of those guys started playing on that, you know. B.B. King talks about how he used to play on a one string guitar where he would actually nail a nail up on a fence and put another nail at the bottom and put the string there and just run something up against it.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, my first guitar was from the Sears Roebuck catalog, too.

It was the it was the red, white and blue Buck Owens guitar. Remember, remember Buck Owens played that red, white and blue guitar on Hee Haw. Yep.

And I think it was Harmony that made it. And it was in the Sears catalog. And, you know, when I was a kid, you know, we'd get the big, thick Sears catalog and you flip through it for Christmas.

Yep. That's the one I want right there. I think those were silver tones, weren't they? Yeah, they did have silver tones.

They did at one point in time. I think the silver tone, was that an electric one they had though, I think? What was it? I thought all their guitars were silver tone brand. Oh, they could have been.

They could have been. I'm not sure. I could be mistaken.

But yeah, but I know I had that guitar for so long. And I think I was about 10 years old. I decided one day to take a can of spray paint to it.

So it wasn't red, white and blue anymore. Not good. So are there any favorite places you like to play at? You know, Legends, obviously, the studio down in Lockport.

Those are probably, if I take my top two places, those are probably two of my top places. Other places that I like to play at, Johnny Blitz in Westmont, the uptown in Westmont, which is, you know, it's a kind of a, what do I want to say, a neighborhood bar, is that people come in, they get there. They're like the after 12 crowd.

Yes. Yeah. So you'll get there about nine o'clock.

Not that many people there. Twelve o'clock. They come from the other place.

They come in, you know, they're all night long. Right, right, right. When's your next gig? Next gig is going to be at the studio.

Oh, no kidding. Okay. At the studio this Saturday.

Okay. We'll have a, we call it a trio, but if Didi's here, it's four people. So it's, it's what we call the modern math.

Zach, didn't they call that new math at one time? They did. It's like it's math. What's new about it? It's common core.

I think you have to combine different shapes and triangles to equal four. That's right. All right.

Where can people find you if they're looking for you on social media? Social media website is www.downtowncharliebrown.com. Facebook under either downtown Charlie Brown Blues Band or just Charles Brown. I post all my gigs up there. Okay.

But we have a list of every place we're playing on the website pretty much all the time. Kind of updated a little bit now. I think that I'm light on some of the January gigs that we have, but most of the gigs are always on the website, www.downtowncharliebrown.com. Very good.

Very good. Well, thanks for coming. Do you think you can close out the show with one more tune? One of your favorites? Yeah, we can do that.

Yeah, that'd be great. This is, let's see. Ah, let's see.

Let me re-tune this thing again. We'll do a Robert Johnson tune. You know, it's called Judgment Day.

And Robert Johnson actually... Don't tell me my tune is going, Dave. Here we go. So Robert Johnson kind of wrote this song about his dominance over women.

This is going to go over well. If I had possession of a Judgment Day, women I'm loving would have no right to pray. You know, here's another song that he did, Coming to My Kitchen, because he did a lot of songs on dominating women.

And in that song, it has this verse, I got my last nickel from her nation's sack. And I'd sung that song for a while. I didn't know what a nation's sack was.

I like to know what I'm singing about. So I looked it up. A nation's sack is this pouch that women would carry around 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, their belt around their waist, and a pouch that they would keep some of maybe things in there if they had a charm or something they wanted to force, get someone to fall in love with, or maybe their money, so forth.

And they kept it down by their crotch. And so Myra Johnson, if he's able to go and get his last nickel from that nation's sack, it's talking about his dominance over women. And so this one here says, if I had possession of a Judgment Day, women I'm loving would have no right to pray.

If I had possession of a Judgment Day, women I'm loving would have no right to pray. Went to the mountain as far as I could see. Went to the mountain as far as I could see.

Man and a woman, know some blues got me. Very nice. Very good.

Good to be here. Thanks for coming out. You're welcome.

Well, there you have it. The Delta Blues. Magnificent.

Fantastic. You know, I mean, even the way he looked, the way he dressed, even when he was just talking, it sounded like Delta Blues was coming out of him. I'm telling you, it's just, I could sit there and listen to that all night long.

I just love that sound. It is a lost art. And he's so good at it.

And I can't believe he's only been playing guitar for six or seven years. I know. When I first met him, he was a piano player.

Wow. Unbelievable. But it was amazing to watch his growth on that instrument for the past several years, because the first time I saw him play, he looked nervous.

Everybody was looking at him like, Charlie, what are you doing with this guitar in your hands? And he just kept getting better and better. He strikes me as the kind of person that if he wants to be good at something, he will be. He's going to do it, right? Yeah.

Yes. I mean, he already knows how to play piano. So, I mean, that helps.

If you know piano, you can pretty much pick up anything. Right. But to pick it up that quickly and be as good as he is.

Absolutely. It's unbelievable. So that was a lot of fun talking to Charlie.

And otherwise, everything else is going good. And I guess we'll see everybody next week on our next episode. Yep.

We'll see you then. See you next week. The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast is edited by Paul Martin.

Theme song courtesy of MNR Rush. The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music heard on the show. The music is used to promote the guests that are featured.

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