The
long, gnarled,
nimble fingers that raced, danced, and jumped across countless battered upright
barroom pianos are still. The cracked, soulful voice that rasped out the blues
to generations of listeners is finally silent. The Grey Ghost is gone, and with
him an era. He was the last of the barrelhouse piano players, a first-
generation Texas bluesman. And as Tary Owens pointed out to the crowd at the
Continental Club on the occasion of Ghost’s last appearance there, “You’ll
never hear this kind of music again.”
Ghost passed away quietly July 17 at Heritage Park, a nursing home in East
Austin where he spent the last year of his life. He had suffered a fall on July
3 (not a stroke as was widely reported), which left him largely unable to
speak, eat, or drink. Through his final days, a steady stream of friends kept a
vigil by his side. And just three nights before his fall, Ghost gave his final
concert when he sat at an organ at the nursing home, playing and singing
continuously for two hours. As the night nurse helped him back to his room, she
asked him what he’d been doing. “Having a good time,” he beamed.
He was born Roosevelt Thomas Williams in Bastrop, Texas, December 7, 1903. He was named
after Teddy Roosevelt, and at one time in his life, carried the nickname
“President.” After the early death of his father, Williams moved to Taylor, a
major rail and cotton center, where he was raised by his mother, stepfather,
and two sisters.
Barely into his teens, Williams began picking up some basic musical training
at school and would spend his afternoons at friend Baby Van’s house, practicing
on Van’s piano. Williams was influenced by the music he heard around him,
picking it out by ear on the piano. Central Texas was a melting pot of musical
styles, mixing African-American, Mexican, Anglo, German, Czech, and French
traditions. Williams absorbed all this, especially the music he heard pouring
out of the juke joints he was too young to enter. Later, he would be influenced
by the likes of Charlie Dillard, Earl “Fatha” Hines, and Count Basie.
With only a rudimentary background of training, but blessed with a good ear,
Williams was able to develop his own style, one that has been hard to label.
Because of his unorthodox style, he was once dubbed the “Thelonius Monk of
blues players.” As Williams once explained, “I plays with my right hand and let
the left hand do what it want to.” Even into his nineties, playing for a
happy-hour crowd at the Continental Club, a shot of whiskey and a lemon set out
before him, fans would watch, fascinated, as he drove and pushed the rhythm
like a jackhammer, offhandedly throwing in rolls and flourishes with his
knuckles.
After leaving school, Williams continued to develop his skills and style while
supporting himself by working in the cotton fields and cotton gins. By the
Twenties, Williams was becoming accomplished enough as a musician to move to
Waco in search of better gigs and opportunities. He began performing at house
parties, carnivals, medicine shows, road houses, juke joints, and barrelhouses.
During this period, his mother died, and Williams took to the road. Like
hundreds of other itinerant musicians who followed the cotton crop, Williams
rode the rails all over the Southwest, and into Louisiana, Oklahoma, West
Texas, and New Mexico.
“I liked riding the freights,” recalled Williams. “I’d find a train that was
stopped and climb into an empty boxcar. I wore my overalls over my clothes: I’d
find something to put under my head for a pillow and lay back for a smooth
ride. I’d rather ride the freight cars than the passenger trains. It wasn’t
hard to get around if you knew the schedules.” Riding the freights in this
fashion earned him the nickname that finally stayed with him, the Grey Ghost.
“I’d hop a freight to Smithville to do a job. I’d wear my overalls over my
stage clothes, and then take ’em off and stash ’em in the bushes. People would
be down at the train depot or the bus station to meet me, but they wouldn’t
find me. I’d just appear at the gig. Then I’d slip away afterwards to catch a
freight. People would ask me `Man, where’d you come from? We never see you
arrive and we never see you leave.’ And I’d say, `I’m just like a ghost. I come
up out of the ground and then I go back in it.'”
During the Depression Thirties, Grey Ghost augmented his music career with a
variety of jobs, including bootlegging, gambling (“I’m good at Coon Can and
poker”), and working as a chauffeur. He was also a healer of sorts, having
picked up some folk medicine from his medicine show work. Also during this
period, he survived a number of brawls, muggings, shootings, knifings, and
general run-ins with the law. Williams recounted one episode in which he was
involved in a three-way running gun battle where, miraculously, no one was
seriously injured. “I guess the good Lord was watching out for me.”
In 1940, Williams had his first brush with fame. Folklorist William Owens
discovered Grey Ghost playing at a skating rink in Navasota, where he made a
field recording of Ghost doing one of his songs, the “Hitler Blues.” Owens was
excited about this song, playing it for everyone he could. Soon, newspaper
articles were mentioning Williams and the song. After a story appeared in
Time Magazine, British historian and radio commentator Alistair Cooke
used the song in a BBC piece on the impact of World War II on American music.
The recordings Ghost made for Owens in 1940 still survive, stored at the
University of Texas, Barker Texas History Center, and Texas A&M University.
Williams’ fame was short-lived, though, and he returned to a life of drifting
and odd-jobbing, slipping back into obscurity.
Tired of travelling, Williams took a full-time job as a bus driver for the
Austin Independent School District, retiring in 1965. Explained Williams, “You
get old, you get tired of things you used to care for. You age and you want
kind of a peaceful life.”
However, even a steady job couldn’t keep Ghost from performing. During these
years, he still kept active, performing regularly at Fat Green’s and the
Victory Grill, run by Johnny Holmes, a friend of his since 1933. The Victory
Grill was a showplace for blues players, hosting many national acts through the
years.
After his retirement in 1965, Grey Ghost had another brush with fame when Tary
Owens (no relation to William Owens) recorded a collection of Williams’ songs,
which, through some exposure, lead to gigs at folk festivals and onstage
appearances with performers like Mance Lipscomb, Janis Joplin, and Robert Shaw.
Then, like a ghost, Williams vanished again.
Another 20 years went by before Tary Owens was able to track down Ghost and
bring him back into the limelight at the age of 83, his energy and abilities
still intact. It was at this time, when most of his contemporaries were already
in their graves, that Grey Ghost’s career really took off. He began travelling
again — this time in style — to prestigious gigs around the country. Owens
released the 1965 recordings on his Catfish label and recorded Texas Piano
Professors, which included Lavada Durst and Erbie Bowser, as well as Ghost.
The mayor of Austin declared December 7, 1987 “Grey Ghost Day,” and a year
later, voters of The Austin Chronicle‘s Music Poll voted Williams
into the Texas Music Hall of Fame.
In recent years, Williams kept busy and elevated his profile even higher by
recording another album for Catfish in 1991, kicking off the annual South by
Southwest Music Festival in 1992, and appearing in films as well as in
National Geographic, which did a spread on Austin in 1990. But he became
most well-known locally for his steady happy hour gig at the Continental Club,
where a whole new generation came to admire this old timer who was “the real
thing.” Hunched over the piano, he seemed lost in his own world as he sang
blues songs and standards of a bygone era, many written by himself.
Williams continued to perform regularly until the spring of 1995, when he was
admitted to Seton Hospital, suffering from uremic poisoning, prostrate cancer,
and a hernia. He then broke his hip in a fall at Seton. Though all of this
probably would have killed anyone else his age, Ghost was strong, and survived.
“I don’t ever give up,” he stated. Following a series of operations, there came
a long convalescence in which Ghost learned to walk again, and gained back 20
pounds that he’d lost. In July, 1995, he entered Heritage Park, where he would
spend his final year. Though confined to a nursing home, he wasn’t ready to
quit. He still enjoyed eating barbecue, smoking cigars, and enjoying a daily
beer or whiskey before sitting down to play the piano. (“A little something for
my throat,” he’d explain.)
With the help of friends, Williams still managed to get out and about a
little, showing up for Johnny Holmes’ birthday party at the Victory Grill, and
performing at a benefit at the Doris Miller Auditorium in September, where he
received a standing ovation. He also attended the funerals of his old friends
and label mates, Erbie Bowser and Lavada “Dr. Hepcat” Durst. Ghost performed
publicly for the last time at the Continental Club last December, on the
occasion of birthday number 92. The Asylum Street Spankers were warming up the
filled-to-capacity room when Grey Ghost was brought in through the back door.
The Spankers left the stage, and when Ghost was brought on, the club became
respectfully hushed. He performed a short and rather shaky set, but all eyes
were riveted on him and all ears strained to hear the voice weakened with age
— one that still evidenced an indomitable spirit. As he blew out the candles
on his cake, Ghost thanked the crowd for coming. “You make me feel like I’m
somebody,” he announced.
Roosevelt Williams leaves behind a daughter, two granddaughters, three great
grandchildren, and seven great, great grandchildren. He also leaves behind
countless friends, fans, and admirers, as well as a tradition and era that we
will never see again. n
Dave Hooper is a local singer-songwriter who was a friend and companion to Grey
Ghost in the last 15 months of his life.
This article appears in July 26 • 1996 and July 26 • 1996 (Cover).