Talking Harlem Hot Music and Ghosts with Jimbo Mathus
Jimbo Mathus: Founder, singer, guitarist and songwriter of the Squirrel Nut ZippersVI: Jim Jimbo Mathus formerly of “Metalflake Mother” and “Johnny Vomit and the Dry Heaves”?
Jimbo: Wow, yah that’s correct. “Johnny Vomit and the Dry Heaves” was the first punk rock band in the state of Mississippi. 1983. Punk Rock. I sang, played bass, drums, it was just an art project, art for art’s sake.
VI: What made you want to cross over into jazz?
Jimbo: I met Katherine, her voice made me want to start learning jazz music. She had this wonderful jazz voice, she had this affinity for swing and jazz and I was already leaning that way. Neither one of us had any training or background in it, she had never sung in public, much less play any instrument. We gathered people around us to make that sound. We were later married.
VI: I am going to name off some music for you to describe. Harlem Hot Music.
Jimbo: It is the best of swing music. Negro jazz music from New York city. Jude Berry, Fats Waller, Slim Galliard, Cap Calloway, Hot Lips Page, too many to name. It was jam session music. It is what they let the band do when they weren’t playing for the big society balls. The twenty piece orchestras, big band leaders like Paul Whiteman. They were letting the negros play what they wanted to play.
VI: Wasn’t there conspiracy about the irony of Whiteman being a big band leader with the name of ‘white man’?
Jimbo: It was an integrated band. But you got to put it into perspective. White people tried to play black music today just like they did then and they can make more money at it.
VI: If they can pull it off. Who is Johnny Ace?
Jimbo: Johnny Ace is an R&B singer from Memphis Tennessee who died playing rush and roulette on the bill with Big Momma Thorpe. “Pledging my Love” and other hits.
VI: Delta blues?
Jimbo: I grew up in the Delta; I am a project of the Delta. I am familiar with it from its earliest to the modern permutation. It is the original music of America, that is where Rock and Roll came from, that is the original blues.
VI: Raymond Scott?
Jimbo: That was a big influence on Squirrel Nut Zippers, that was the Warner Brothers cartoons. Kathy and I fist learned jazz off of Betty Boop cartoons. There is great jazz on there.
VI: What is your favorite Tom Waits song?
Jimbo: “Sixteen shells from a thirty o six’” off of “Rain Dogs”.
VI: What is Klezmer?
Jimbo: Yiddish music. Traditional from eastern European as far as I know that dates back to primordial days. They would play it at weddings, funerals…social music. Gypsy influenced. Highly in our repertoire. The minor keys, the tempos, are very much in our sound.
VI: Django Reinhardt?
Jimbo: Gypsy guitarist that played in France. He used minor keys. Virtuoso.
VI: Fats Waller?
Jimbo: King of Swing. A template for the band as far as guitar goes. We established contact with his guitarist Al Casey early on in NY and hooked up; he was in his early seventies at the time. That was our big influence. Songs like “Sit right down and write myself a letter” and “Honeysuckle rose”, that was how I learned to play guitar. We were blessed.
VI: You have William Faulkner quoted in your songs?
Jimbo: Wash Jones is based on a minor William Faulkner character. I was born in Oxford, Mississippi and that is where Faulkner is from and I have always had an affinity for his literature. One reason I moved to North Carolina was for the literary aspect of it so I started incorporating that into my songs. Wash Jones is a good ol’ boy who runs a gentlemen’s cavern down the river, the fish camp. When they come there they drink whisky and get away from their wives. Wash Jones is sort of their luminary. Someone who sheds light on the situation.
VI: You guys haven’t had a release for eight years.
Jimbo: Not collectively but individually, quite a few. All of us have been active in music our whole life. No deadline for a release, Squirrel Nut Zippers is an art project ultimately so it is more than just the music. We started on a lark and we will end on a lark. We didn’t mean to do anything.
VI: Well, you did.
Jimbo and I continued to talk about former band member Stacy Guess who died of a heroin overdose after being forced out of the band. “The day he died, I was eating and I felt a tap on my shoulder just as real as anything in bright daylight. I turned around and nobody was there,” said Jimbo of the ghost of Guess.
I mentioned how creepy the video was for their hit single “Hell”. “Good, that is what we were trying to do,” said Jimbo. He said that television portrayed life in the early days as overly clean and eerily perfect and the video was to show the creepy contrast between what apparent and what lies beneath the surface. I watched the video after the talk for recollection. The video has fire spitting out of saxophones and someone is strapped to a chair as their teeth are ripped out while the singer eats a ‘Twinkie’.
Interview and photos by Kent Kessinger
More photos at www.kentkessinger.com
