Ollison - Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl

I dedicate this book to my parents,
Royce Dianne Smith-Ollison and Raymond Ollison Jr.
Without them, I would have no story.

THE PICTURE REVEALED THE HAPPINESS I NEVER KNEW.

On the back of the beat-up, black-and-white, wallet-size snapshot, the names are in lovely penmanship, probably Mamas: Raymond + Dianne Ollison. The location: Juarez, Mexico, where my parents honeymooned in September of 1970.

In the picture, they sit in a caf booth. Daddys arm wraps around Mamas slim shoulders as he presses his dark, angular face next to hers. He gives the camera a seductive stare. With flipped bouffant hair, Mama looks like a member of the Marvelettes. Her smile is so wide, sweet, and radiant it melts the heart. Im startled at how svelte she is. For as long as I can remember, Mama has battled serious weight issues.

I saw the photo nearly forty years later and its effect was like fresh air circulating through a musty room. Mama Teacake, my maternal grandmother, gave my younger sister Reagan the picture just before she died. When Reagan shared it with me, I was at her place in Little Rock. We were close to thirty and had grown up knowing only the stormy years of the marriage, which ended just as we started grade school.

Dusty, look at this, Reagan said, handing me the photo. Can you believe this?

I stared at it for a long time.

You betta not walk out of here with it, she said. Ill get you a copy made.

Much has changed since somebody captured the budding marital bliss of the attractive couple from Malvern, Arkansas, both nineteen at the time.

Daddys long dead. Mama steers clear of talking about the early years when their love bloomed. She will, however, go on about the drama, when Daddy left home for days, skipping out on paying the light bill to lay up with some bitch cross town.

I was always left in the dark, Mama said, the double meanings lost on no one.

The country-glam woman-child in the photograph worked two full-time jobs for years, found comfort in food, and constructed a fence around her heart that kept everybody, including my two sisters and me, at a safe distance.

As long as food was in the fridge, clothes on our backs, and a roof overhead, I guess Mama never felt compelled to offer hugs or say I love you. The proof of that love was all around us in the comfortable homes she could barely afford to rent. The proof of that love was in every tired sigh she released before heading to a job she detested.

Growing up, I heard relatives drop intriguing bits about the early years of the marriage, and always with a tinge of sadness.

Yeah, that was back when Dianne and Raymond had just got together.

Lawd, you couldnt tell Dianne nothin bout Raymond. She know she loved him and he loved her.

Uh-huh, they was silly and in love then.

Oh, thats before your time, boy, back when Raymond and Dianne used to go evrywhere togetha. Memba how they used to dance?

Whenever I asked specific questions about that time, the subject quickly changed or I was told, Go ax ya mama. Sometimes I found the nerve to ask her how things were in the early years before Reagan and I were born. But Mama always blew me off with, Boy, that was a long time ago. Dont even remember. Hell, think I was depressed.

She remembers. The end of that marriage, which lasted thirteen years, haunts her still. It haunts me, too. Out of the ashes, mystery and ugliness, I found music.

But music didnt bring my parents together. I believe it was sadness and intimate knowledge of childhood tragedy. They grew up in Malvern, a city smack dab in the middle of Arkansas, right outside of Hot Springs. Daddys side was big, many aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Before Daddy made it to the fourth grade, his two older siblings had died. His mother, whom we called Big Mama, became overprotective of her oldest child left. Because his brother and sister had died so young, Daddy didnt think hed live to see manhood, especially after he was drafted into the Vietnam War just before his nineteenth birthday.

I heard him say years later that he knew he was coming back home in a box. After a dishonorable discharge, Daddy returned to Arkansas a changed man, a time bomb, dead on the inside.

While Daddys folks were churchgoing and discreet about their messiness, Mamas family lived out loud.

Her mother, Rosezella Cole, whom everyone called Teacake, was the indulged daughter of a bootlegger. As a teenager in the 1940s, when most of her girlfriends picked cotton or cleaned the homes of white folks, Mama Teacake rolled around town in her own car.

She inherited her mamas party spirit and a Mona Lisa smile that pulled you in and pushed you out. At fourteen, Mama Teacake married James Smith, a man seven years her senior, who built a modest white house down the hill from his parents place just in time for their rapidly growing family.

About eleven months after Mama was born, my aunt Phyllis came, then Jannette a year later and Bonita barely a year after that. Mama Teacake, just twenty-four, was in the throes of domesticity and, from all accounts, the young couple was happy.

Then early on a Sunday morning, everything changed.

Christmas Day, 1955: James had finished a long shift and headed home in time to see the girls open their gifts. He never made it. As he drove down the highway, James fell asleep at the wheel, crashing into an oncoming truck and dying instantly. Mama, who was five, said she remembered all the toys, decorations, and food preparations. Then just before noon, as the family gathered, an officer showed up with the news.

Barely a year after Jamess death, Mama Teacake found a new man, Ollie Watkins, a conk-wearing young Fats Domino lookalike who moved into the house on Third Street. He was close to Mama Teacakes age and everything James was not: shiftless, unemployed, and a lover of juke joint life. James had served in the Navy, and Mama Teacake received ample benefits, plus steady money from Ma Rene, Mama Teacakes bootlegging mother, who couldnt stand Ollie.

He lived off Mama Teacake for about two years before securing a job at Acme Brick Company. They fought as hard as they drank and partied, often in front of the girls. There was an argument one unseasonably hot spring night in 1957.

Mama Teacake and Ollie had been drinking. She accused him of fooling around. He denied it.

Woman, you crazy. You gon believe me or them lyin eyes of yours?

You a lowdown muthafucka, Ollie Watkins, you know that?

Aw, Teacake, gon with that shit.

Meanwhile, young Dianne, Phyl, Jannette, and Bonita sat on the couch side by side watching TV.

Im so tired of you thinkin you slick, Ollie, thinkin you makin a fool outta some damn body.

Aint nobody makin no fool outta nobody. You the fool, Teacake. You the damn fool.

Oh, Im the fool, huh? Im a goddamn fool?

You goddamn right you a goddamn fool. Makin shit up and carryin on. Sick of this!

Im gon show you what a fool can do. You just stay yo ass right there, you rat-soup-eatin muthafucka.

Where you goin? Bring yo ass back here.

Mama Teacake returned with her pistol. The girls stiffened. She aimed at Ollie; he grabbed her wrist. They struggled.

Let go, Ollie!

You crazy, woman!

Let go!

The gun went off.

Mama Teacake screamed. Ollie! What you do?

Blood flowed from the hole in Jannettes neck. Bow lips parted and baby-doll eyes flung open, the five-year-old girl died on young Diannes lap.