ABOUT THIS BOOK

Jeannie Cheatham is a living legend in jazz and blues. A pianist, singer, songwriter, and co-leader of the Sweet Baby Blues Band, she has played and sung with many of the greats in blues and jazz—T-Bone Walker, Dinah Washington, Cab Callaway, Joe Williams, Al Hibbler, Odetta, and Jimmy Witherspoon. Cheatham toured with Big Mama Thornton off and on for ten years and was featured with Thornton and Sippie Wallace in the award-winning PBS documentary Three Generations of the Blues. Her music, which has garnered national and international acclaim, has been described as unrestrained, exuberant, soulful, rollicking, wicked, virtuous, wild, and truthful. Cheatham's signature song, "Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On" is a staple in jazz and blues clubs across America and in Europe, Africa, and Japan.

In this delightfully frank autobiography, Jeannie Cheatham recalls a life that has been as exuberant, virtuous, wild, and truthful as her music. She begins in Akron, Ohio, where she grew up in a vibrant multiethnic neighborhood surrounded by a family of strong women. From those roots, she launched a musical career that took her from the Midwest to California, doing time along the way everywhere from a jail cell in Dayton, Ohio, where she was innocently caught in a police raid, to the University of Wisconsin-Madison—where she and Jimmy Cheatham taught music. Cheatham writes of a life spent fighting racism and sexism, of rage and resolve, misery and miracles, betrayals and triumphs, of faith almost lost in dark places, but mysteriously regained in a flash of light. Cheatham's autobiography is also the story of her fifty-years-and-counting love affair and musical collaboration with her husband and band partner, Jimmy Cheatham.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jeannie Cheatham is still actively creating and performing the music she loves. Her albums include Good Nuz Bluz, Blues & the Boogie Masters, Basket Full of Blues, Luv in the Afternoon, Back to the Neighborhood, Homeward Bound, Midnight Mama, and Sweet Baby Blues.

REVIEWS

Here's a breezy, light, and utterly charming tale of a musician's life with all the ups-and-downs and turns-and-twists that are a part of those of us in jazz. Jeannie Cheatham knows everybody, and she has much to say about her fellow musicians. Her descriptive style paints an unforgettable picture as she covers the last fifty years of being on the scene with her husband Jimmy and the Sweet Baby Blues Band.

— Marian McPartland

Being an admitted, although recovering, racist and sexist when it comes to playing blues and jazz, I have been further educated and much less prejudiced after reading Jeannie Cheatham's book Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On. Jeannie's book drives home the fact that we who embrace music as a profession share common joys and common miseries. Having played with Jeannie I will never again say "plays good for a woman." I can't say she's "one of the boys," but she is definitely one of the musicians. Thanks, Jeannie, for a wonderful book from another point of view.

— Fred Wesley

The truth is alive and well in Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On! I know, because I've been the legendary Bo Diddley's band leader and bass player for twenty years. Prior to that, I got to spend two incredible years playing with Jeannie Cheatham. She taught me where 'the pocket' is. This book is right in 'the pocket.'

— Debby Hastings

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Prologue. Brand-New Blues
1. Back to the 'Hood
2. The Piano
3. Three Visitors
4. Mr. Arthur Reginald Riley
5. Funerals
6. The Reverend Uncle Frank, Lessons on Men, and Finding Jesus
7. The Coming of the Cold
8. Summer Heat
9. Wrong Direction
10. The New House
11. It's an Ill Wind That Don't Blow Somebody Some Good
12. Yellow Cab to the Red-Light District
13. Junkies and Jazz
14. World War II: Let the Good Times Roll
15. Just Get On the Greyhound, Girl
16. The Evans Exodus
17. Jailhouse Blues
18. From Hell to Heaven Blues
19. Snowbound
20. The Song of the Colvinaires
21. New Baby Blues
22. A Blizzard of Birdshit
23. The Colors of Many Changes
24. Triumph, Tragedy, Turmoil, and Tenor Players
25. A Little Love Song
26. Little Mattie, Big Mama, and the Beautiful Miss M
27. The Blues and the Buffalo Scuffle
28. Escape from Buffalo
29. New York City, Ditty-Wah-Ditty
30. Fatback
31. Bronx Gulag and Agoraphobia
32. The Light Shineth in the Darkness
33. From Hell to Academia
34. Welcome to Wisconsin
35. On the Move in Madison
36. Movin' an' Moanin', Groovin' an' Groanin' in Madison
37. The Way West
38. Pipe Dreamin' in the Valley of Smoke
39. A Standing O in San Diego
40. Take It!
41. Beelzebub and the Mad Mexican
42. Make a Joyful Noise!
43. New Mule Kickin' in Our Stall
44. Blues on the Omnibus
45. Blow Out at the Belly Up Tavern and the Birth of Three Generations of the Blues
46. Mr. Jefferson Comes to Town
47. The Birth of the Sweet Baby Blues Band
48. Hot Bulbs and Hot Flashes
49. Sturm und Drang Blues: Vienne, France
50. Shoofly Pie with Shafafa in The Hague
51. Chickenshit or Chicken Salad?
52. How Long?
53. Effluvia and Euphoria
54. From Slavery to the White House
55. Tears of Sorrow
56. Blues like Jay McShann
57. ABC: Around the World, Beyond Betrayal, Celebrations
58. Livin' in the Nineties
59. Making History in a Small Hotel
60. Back to Bina Avenue