Interview Project
Interview with Drink Small

Interviewer: Scott Perry
Transcribed by Gaile Welker

SP: I started off this morning by re-reading the article that they did on you in Living Blues [#104] in which I thought Tut Underwood had done a real good job.

DS: Oh yeah. He had.

SP: And did that article lead to any further recognition or any paying gigs for you or festivals or anything like that?

DS: Yeah. It has. It has, and it let people know I'm still playing, and [that] I was still living at the time. And right now, I'm still living and I'm good to go!

SP: [Laughing] Well, I know that. I saw you just last February and you were playing and singing better than in all the time I've been seeing you in the last five years. Actually, this interview is taking place because there are several people on the internet that were asking about you and some of them had thought that you actually were no longer with us. Any ideas why these rumors were out there?

DS: I guess what happened, I haven't recorded anything recently and, by not being heard, that could have led to that. But I'm still playing, and I'm playing better, and I'm reaching a new audience. A lot of my friends, they know I can play the blues - period! And a lot of the younger people checking into me now 'cause I go a lot of places. Everywhere I go, a lot of people say, "Man, I met you forty years ago!" And a lot of their children, they go, "You played for my mama and my daddy." I'm still doing it. The other night some folks brought their grandchildren out. I was playing for their mama, grandmamas, daddies and now I'm workin' on their grandchildren.

SP: Really? Drink, you don't strike me as being old enough to have been playing for that many generations. Would you mind if I ask you how old you are or where you were born?

DS: Let me tell you something, man. I'm 65 and good to go.

SP: 65?

DS: Ain't nothing wrong with me! Like I tell my audience, if you're using it, use it. Tell 'em I want to play the blues so bad for them, I can taste it!

SP: Drink, where were you born? You were born in South Carolina, weren't you?

DS: I'm a native of Bishopville, South Carolina and that's the county of Lee. It's in Lee County. And the town of Bishopville, it's in the Pee Dee area part of South Carolina.

SP: And you wrote a song, didn't you, about Bishopville?

DS: Yeah. That song's, yeah, about forty years old, cause I was being, I was about 15 or 16 years old when I wrote that song. I'd be in school just singin' "Bishopville women. I'd have my guitar at school....

SP: You got your start, actually, or from what I read in this Living Blues article, you got your start singing gospel music with a group called the Spiritualaires.

DS: Well, to be more technical, the Spiritualaires are the ones who got me out of Bishopville. I was playing spirituals down there, well, but what happened...the first group I organized, as a schoolboy was a gospel group, I organized a gospel group called The Six Stars. I organized that little group. At that time, I wouldn't sing. I was shamed to sing.

SP: Really?

DS: I organized the group. I played the guitar and I would play a little pump organ. Had a pump organ at the house and learned to play a little tune called "Coonshine Baby."

SP: So that was not a sacred group, necessarily?

DS: It was a gospel group. See, what it was...see, here's the way it was, a gospel group you sing in church. But, you know, when I first start, I wouldn't really sing the blues songs, but I would play it. But I organized a little gospel group. I was about 16 or 17 years old, and they was the Six Stars. And then I played for them. Then I finally started singing. I sang bass with the gospel group I had ' cause I could make it, and I played the piano in my church with the junior choir. So then I was singin' in the junior choir. I had been shamed to sing. After I started singin' in the junior choir and playing piano in the church and we'd go around churches where they had a lot of choirs and our junior choir would sing and I'd play along for the other choirs. Play the piano. And, at the same time, I still had a little gospel group, The Six Stars. I had both goin' at the same time. I came up doing both sides of it.

SP: That's one of the things that interest me, that in a generation previous to yours, it might have been considered improper to sing blues or to be in the church and into the blues -- to sing spirituals and gospel music and then be singing blues music. Son House is one example of a blues artist that struggled with this.

DS: See, he was really old. See, my time's a little more modern time and, like I'm saying, I'd be out making my living and, like I'm saying, when I play for the church, my church, I didn't get anything for that and the little quartet, you'd make a little money. 'Cause, they put that in the treasury. But when I used to play the guitar at a little house party, I started getting' five dollars a night. Friday, five dollars, Saturday too, see that's a ten dollars a week and I was making more money doing that than them guys that was down there plowing a mule for two dollars a day or a dollar a day. Yeah, I made ten dollars a week.

SP: Did you ever do any of that, Drink? Manual labor? Plowin' or any of that stuff?

DS: A little bit. I plowed a little bit. I don't think I plowed none after I was 17. I plowed a little bit. I went to school, you know, and the little plowing I did, it wasn't that much. But I got a half acre farm. I picked a little cotton, broke a little corn, and crop a little bit of fodder. That's that corn stock you use it to make fodder for the cows and mules and stuff like that. And I crop a little bit of 'bacco, 'cause where I lived, mostly a cotton area instead of a tobacco area, you know. A little bit, not that much. That's why I said I wanted to be a guitar player 'cause I couldn't pick much cotton. I really couldn't! So I learned to pick guitar and so like what happened when I went to high school I got with another group down there, The Golden Five. They were already organized, 'cause the group I had down there done broke up. Some of them got married, moved out of town, what not. So I got with a group that was already singing, The Golden Five and we had the best group back then. See our group was the one that invited the Spiritualaires, the ones from Columbia, that got me out of Bishopville. They're the ones who took me on the road and got me out of the cotton field.

SP: So, when you were with The Six Stars, you were playing mostly piano or guitar or both?

DS: Played guitar.

SP: Then, when you were with the Spiritualaires, you started singing?

DS: I played guitar with the group I organized. I finally started singin', but I didn't start singin' when we first got together.

SP: When you were recording were you singing on the record?

DS: Spiritualaires? Yes. I played guitar and I sang bass on one song, but I was singing real bass, but the manager of the Spiritualaires he was a try-to-be bass singer. After the manager quit, I went to singing bass full time, you know, and playing the guitar. But, back up a little bit now, before I left the Spiritualaires, I had the Golden Five. I tried singing bass with them. I was singin' bass in the back and playing the guitar. Plus, on Friday and Saturday nights, I was playing guitar at house parties. And I played for my church. I mostly played the piano with the young peoples chorus and sometimes the other choir would get up and sing and I would fall behind them on piano. But, see, but for my church, I mostly played the piano for the church. I was still playing guitar with the group. With the quartet group, rather.

SP: And so you think that the reason there wasn't any problem with you doing that is just because, by the time you were coming up that...

DS: I was doing both.

SP: But, in general, amongst the community, that wasn't a problem? That you could be playing blues and gospel music? People didn't think anything about it?

DS: They didn't like it, but I makin' a livin'.

SP: I got you. Is church still part of your life, Drink?

DS: What's that?

SP: You still go to church?

DS: Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh.

SP: Do you still sing in church or play in church?

DS: Well, every now and then. The reason I don't go to it regular is because, what happens, if I go regular, they'll want me to stop.

SP: I got you.

DS: And then about the blues, they...I'd have to cut it out 'cause I wouldn't get back to the church.

SP: Well, let's talk a little bit about your blues playing. In the Living Blues article, you listed a lot of blues influences including some big band jazz and some country and western and blues.

DS: Back that up a little bit. Okay, now when it come to playing guitar. Okay, goin' back to that now. I play the piano. I had an uncle that played the guitar. Got two of them that play. One live in Columbia, and one that lived back where I was livin'. But the one that was livin' in Columbia play better, but he never left the back porch. And other people in our family can play music too, you know, but I'm 'bout the only one who took it to the max, you know. A lot of guitar players play around in different places, you know. Different areas, like I ran a workshop down in Maxwell, South Carolina about eight years ago and a fella in the festival down there, he give me a good idea. He said he knew a few chords but, way back, he said where he came from, in every neighborhood, they would always be a good guitar player. And when he said that, it really dawned on me that you can find yourself in the country and in the neighborhood and you could be finding guys who play a little bit. Then I thought back to my own time, I bet there's fifteen different little sections of the county here and in each one is some guy that play the guitar. So, it was cause that was a cheap instrument, you know. I could order one of them Stella guitars for 10 or 15 dollars, learn a few chords. You could play around a little bit and cut the fool.

SP: So, you had some local influences in addition to what you heard on the radio?

DS: Oh yeah. Okay now, vocal wise, like I said, my mama could sing. My cousins and all could spiritual sing, and my uncle use to sing quartets and all that kind of stuff. So people in my family sing, you know. Well the quartet, when I was playing gospel music, I heard all of them and this other lady playin' a good guitar was Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was a good picker and so, back in '57, we was doing gospel. I was inspired by her back bein' a kid. And I like the way she plays, and by leavin' town to be with the Spiritualaires group, and they brought me to Columbia back in '55, and so she use to do the big shows with Sam Cooke. Now we had the #2 group in the country. Gospel. We broke up. But what happened. I met Rosetta Tharpe and she liked the way I played and she did all she could to persuade me to leave my group. 'Cause see, back then, you had two duos out and she wanted us to be the gospel duo, cause they had Les Paul and Mary Ford. They had the Park Music duo. And Micky and Sylvia, they had that rhythm and blues duo. She wanted she and I to have the gospel duo.

SP: What happened? I would have loved to have heard that!

DS: What happened was she was the number one lady gospel guitarist, and I was then number one male gospel guitarist. See, I be with my group. See, our group was number two. I just wouldn't leave the group, you know. That's why, but it would have gone good 'cause we would have been the gospel duo.

SP: I don't doubt for a minute that would have been the greatest thing to come out. I love Sister Rosetta Tharpe and you both. It would have been really something.

DS: The first time we get together, I show you the way szhe used to play.

SP: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I love the way she plays.

DS: She used to play vestapol but they had to tune down real low. Tune down real low.

SP: So, she played in an open D tuning?

DS: Well, they didn't call it D. [Laughs]. That just a ...

SP: They call it vestapol?

DS: Well now don't feel bad, but that's the name the whites give it. Tune it open to the pitch of D. But she had hers tuned open to C.

SP: To C?

DS: So you can't copy her!

SP: Got'cha. (laughter)

DS: But see in D tuning, what happened, I know a guy here, a buddy of mine, he played good. Like he tune his up to F, and when you play it open, it sound F. You can't go into F tuning, but you tune it whatever key you can do it in. You can call it that when you find somebody who know theory about music. Tell you what you tryin' to do, so you can call it that from then on. Now see D tuning, in D you go low D, now, you can almost call that D tuning, but when you tune it all the way open then they call it D tuning. It's just an individual name people give things.

SP: One of the things you talked about in the LB article in describing your performance and your style of recording as being "gifted." And that when you're "gifted" you don't have to think too far in advance or plan things out to every detail, you just get in there and you do it. And that's something that’s always struck me about your performance is that you are a very, what I call a "natural" player. When you start playin' and your mouth drops open and you start singin' it's just like people get to see right down into you.

DS: It's just like this. If man give you something it's like water on a duck's back, it falls off. But when God gives you something, it's on the inside. Mahalia Jackson, Shuggie Stevens for instance. Mahalia Jackson started out in the fourth or fifth grade, and she got more feelin' in her heart than somebody who went to the Juliard school of music. You hear what I'm sayin"? Now a lot people laugh at the Juliard style of playin'. But see what happened was, she wasn't trained. She's a stylist. If a guy's got degrees man, they can't do it. They can't get that style. He may not be playin' nothin', but you can't do it.

SP: That's one of the things that's intersting to me, as somebody that tries to play and sing blues music, the harder you try to study it the less you actually end up knowin', and that the more you just allow yourself to do it, it seems as though the more successful you are at getting' to the real stuff.

DS: You kind of got to be born with it. Just like Ray Charles did with classical music and jazz. Classical music is written, jazz music is played. So that's the difference. Like I tell people they can go to the music hall here at the University of South Carolina, you can go to the music hall, but you can't make the blues sound like Drink Small.

SP: That's right [laughter]. Well Drink you play gospel music, you play blues, you play…

DS: Ragtime, I can play slide, I can play open tunin', and all that kind of stuff. But I just mostly stay regular, but every now and them I drop the D, or I can go the other way, but I'm just too lazy to do it.

SP: You can play a lot of different styles of blues, but mostly people seem to try to associate you the Piedmont style although, as you say you play Delta and other things. Did you ever have the opportunity to learn directly from any of the recorded people that are associated with the Piedmont style, like Blind Boy Fuller, or Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee?

DS: Well there used to be a guy back in my home town, called Greenback, he used to play that style. Couple more guys and myself, we all played a little Piedmont, but everyone you hear, he had his little style, but he wasn't real good, but he was all right for his surroundings. See one guy, he could play pretty good in E. Make a few round abouts and turn around, but he didn't know what he was doin'. You might find another one can play a country song in C, a little bit. All of 'em was limited, you know, that's the way that went. So you had to hear 'bout ten of 'em to make one good guitar player! But I didn't learn from them, because I had it in me, you know. The way different guys were playin', they were limited. They didn't know what keys were.

SP: Well you write a lot of your own songs, but if you wanted to learn somebody else's song did you learn it off the radio or off of a record?

DS: Do you know that right now, all the songs I don't know. I'm so full of ab lib and junk. If I don't know a song all the way through, I'm full of poise. I make up a verse and ab lib my own song. I just can't do songs the way other people do. That's the reason that I don't have to learn from no one. My style of playin', I don't imitate

SP: You don't imitate, you create.

DS: Right!

SP: One of the last things I wanted to talk about is something you touched on in the LB article and in some conversations we've had in the past. You've expressed, and justifiably expressed, a frustration with not having been able to "make it" in blues, even though you are, by many people, considered to be one of the most talented and "real" players on the scene. You haven't really achieved the monetary success that you've wanted.

DS: Me and my socalled management went to New York one time and I gave this tape done by Gary Erwin's Music called "Live and Outrageous." This one guy says, "I hearin' what you're doin', and I don't know what category to put you in, blues, jazz or gospel. Then see when people go out to hear you play blues, they look for you to be broke down, usin' bad English, and that kind of stuff. That's the real stuff.

When they see a guy got nice shoes and bein' kind of cool like, they say " He don't look like a blues player, he looks like a hip player." But see I can't do that 'cuz I ain't dumb, you know. Guys like John Lee Hooker he might do a few things 'cuz his English is real bad, 'cuz he doesn't know any better. But me, I'm not gonna know pretty good English and make it bad just to impress people. I'm not that way. They want you to be a low down fella, shoes run over with a hankerchief hangin' out your back pocket, smokin' a pipe or chewin' tobacco or somethin'.

SP: Well, you said they didn't know what category to put you in. Do you think they need to make a special category just for you?

DS: I don't know. Maybe I got to do it.

SP: Do you do all of your own booking or do you have somebody that helps you out with management?

DS: My manager books some, too, but he's kind of elderly now. Every now and then, he give us some, you know.

SP: So you do a lot of it on your own?

DS: Yeah.

SP: What do you think it would really take for you to take it up a notch and take it to the next level and start getting the recognition that you deserve?

DS: I need some of that cause, you see, when I do spirtual songs, I do em good and jump back and do a blues song and I do that good. No matter which one - halleluin' and boobalooin'.

SP: I like that sayin', halleleuin' or boogalooin'.

DS: Uh huh. I gotta make me a category. I'm gonna do an acoustic thing called Drink Small Doing It All. You take it or leave it.

SP: Well, I think a lot of people would take it if they had a chance to see it. You are going to get a little recognition next year. You said, in a past conversation we had, that you're going to be inducted in the Hall of Fame of South Carolina.

DS: Yeah.

SP: Hopefully, that'll result in some things for you.

DS: Yeah. I got to find me a little studio who'll give me a good deal. I think I'm gonna do something acoustic, you know. Just me, the whole thing where I'll do spirituals and slide and everything. Do a little bit of everything.

SP: I think that's a great idea. This last question is perhaps the most difficult question for me to ask, but one of the things you said in this LB article is that you talked about the state of the blues today. Do you think it's pretty healthy?

DS: Yeah, it is, but I get into arguments with my friends or audience on a friendly basis. They say, "Don't you think it's nice that blues' comin' back?" How can the blues come back when I kept it here? How can you talk about the blues coming back when I'm playing it all the time!

SP: That's kind of interesting. A lot of blues societies have, as their slogan, "Keepin' The Blues Alive", like the blues is dying or something. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

DS: Not to a guy that preserves it. You talking to somebody who don't know? They don't know no better? How can the blues not be alive, when I was playing it forty-some years? I ain't got it? You lookin' at it! You talking bout it ain't alive? It got to be alive while I'm talking to you. I'm talkin' like it's a joke, but it makes some sense you know!

SP: I don't know if there's ever a whole lot of money in it, unless you're B.B. King or John Lee Hooker or Buddy Guy, but there are a lot of people getting recognition now.

DS: Cause of guys like me who kept it. And I'm going to talk up. I didn't steal this here. I got it. And I didn't learn it from nobody. I got it. And I'm gonna say something about it. Ain't that right?

SP: Yeah.

DS: White guys can play, but they stole it from the blacks. Charlie Pride, you can say he stole country music. You got it?

SP: Well, whether they stole it or not, are there white players out there who can do it?

DS: Yeah. They done heard it and they got the money to buy the equipment and buy the wah wah and the fuzz and they can buy all the literature in the world to learn it, you know. If the blacks just had one tenth of that money to spend, we'd rule the world, baby.

SP: I wonder sometimes if us poor white folks can ever get it. You think they can?

DS: Well...well...well...you will get it but it's a hybrid. Anything mixed is not the real deal. Am I right?

SP: Right. That's basically what it gets down to...

DS: You have it. You'll have it, but deep down within, it's not the real deal. It's just that some people are born with something, and one in a million can learn it, but just a small percentage. You see, the white guys, they have a hard time sounding black. I look at 'em and I feel sorry for 'em, but they doing it. Look at Stevie Ray Vaughn, I don't bear drugs, but a lot of those fellows, the got to use all kinds of drugs to get the black sound, you know. They get it pretty good but when that stuff dies down, oh, Lord! You need to go to the doctor quick!