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222 pages

English

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A hilarious, reeling distillation of six decades of musical mythology and history - the world of rock'n'roll re-imagined in peerless prose by a writer who partied with the Stones, took tea with Miles and nearly came to blows with The Clash. Funny, warm, memorable and vivid, with a cast of genuinely unforgettable characters, The Hellhound Sample is rock'n'roll's The Corrections (Fourth Estate, 2009).

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Publié par	Headpress
Date de parution	16 novembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	3
EAN13	9781900486897
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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I M P R I N T

THE HELLHOUND SAMPLE by Charles Shaar Murray

Text copyright © Charles Shaar Murray
This volume copyright © Headpress 2012
Cover: Rachel Dreyer (design), Charlotte Parkin (concept), Rik Rawling (background art); Rachel Dreyer, Caleb Selah & Charlotte Parkin (photo selection).
Back cover photo: Charles Shaar Murray, by Allison McGourty
Layout & design: David Kerekes

Headpress diaspora: Thomas Campbell, Giuseppe, Dave, Lucy B.
This is a work of fiction. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, on earth or in space, this dimension or that, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-90048-689-7
WWW.WORLDHEADPRESS.COM
the gospel according to unpopular culture

A HEADPRESS BOOK First published by Headpress in 2011. Revised September 2011.
Headpress, Suite 306, The Colourworks 2a Abbot Street, London, E8 3DP, UK
[tel] 0845 330 1844 [email] headoffice@headpress.com [web] www.worldheadpress.com
PRAISE FOR THE HELLHOUND SAMPLE

“It’s a riot.”
—Joe Muggs, The Word

“Rock novels often shy away from the music, but this one comes alive every time someone strums a chord or opens their mouth to sing... Fans of the music will enjoy Murray’s spirited homage.”
—Jonathan Gibbs, The Independent
“Here are characters that live and breathe, propelled into situations that invariably enthral, as events leap off the printed page at a pace that’s positively cinematic. Can’t wait to see the film... And hear the soundtrack.” —Ian Fortnam, Classic Rock
“A heavily hip tale of bluesmen, rockers, rappers and gangsters, sprawled over decades and continents, with some supernatural suspense thrown into the mix...
Charles Shaar Murray has drawn on four decades of music journalism to create a memorable debut novel.” —Olaf Tyaransen, Hot Press

“One of the best music novels ever written.” —John May, The Generalist

“Absolutely rivetting.” —Rich Deakin, Shindig Quarterly

“Charles Shaar Murray has given us a phenomenal story, with a handful of characters so completely drawn, you think they’re jamming in the next room. From a barbershop in the Delta in the 1930s to the bustle and movement that was rock’s birth in early 1960s UK to the sun-baked canyons
of LA in the present day, Murray takes us on a journey of family, passion,
culpability, and talent. It’s all here: The ties that bind, the price you pay
for the choices you make, and oh, man, the music! There’s not a note, a harmonic, a single chord progression, that doesn’t ring out like the voice of Robert Johnson’s devil-haunted guitar.
The Hellhound Sample is staggering. It achieves something rare in fiction: it makes you feel and it makes you wonder.” —Deborah Grabien, creator of the JP Kinkaid series of books
ALSO BY CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY
Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix And Post-war Pop
Boogie Man:
The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century

Shots from the Hip
THE HELLHOUND SAMPLE
by
Charles Shaar Murray
To all the blues and soul men and women
To all the rockers and rappers
To the restless spirit of Robert Johnson And most of all to
ANNA CHEN
… my big gold dream …
This book is lovingly and respectfully dedicated
PROLOGUE
CLARKSDALE, MISSISSIPPI, 1932
Ten-year-old James Moon didn’t know how much longer he could wait for his daddy to finish up his business in the store. The sun was almost directly overhead, and he was hot and thirsty. He’d only been wearing his brand-new overalls, starched stiff as cardboard, for half an hour, but they were already beginning to chafe his thighs raw. And, worst of all, he was busting for a pee, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot like that was somehow going to help.
Through the plate-glass window, he could see his daddy arguing with the man he called ‘the Jew’ over the price of the sacks of feed and seed he was buying for the farm. Judging by all the arm-waving that was going on, neither Mr Birnbaum nor Reverend Solomon Moon looked like they were planning to budge any time soon.
Gazing down the block, he saw a small slender man in an immaculate grey suit and snap-brim hat stroll onto the corner. He had a guitar slung behind him. As James watched, the man stooped to place the hat, crown downwards, on the sidewalk beside him, and scrabble in his pants pocket for a few coins to toss into it. He pulled a metal flask from inside his jacket and raised it to his lips, taking two or three long swallows before stowing it again. Then he swung the guitar forward and produced something from his jacket pocket which he carefully fitted onto the pinky of his left hand. Then he started to play.
The sound James heard almost made him wet his pants. Even at almost midday on a busy bustling street, with folks going about their business and mules and automobiles passing by, the quivering sliding moan the man was conjuring from his guitar strings cast a chill shadow over James, like the sun was still shining for everybody else but some spooky old cloud was blocking it off just for him. It was like the sound was a cold hand reaching right deep down inside him and gently squeezing his heart.
The man raised his head, looked around him. For a second he seemed to be staring straight at James, his eyes flashing as his gaze met the boy’s. James felt like those eyes – one wide open, one oddly hooded – were drilling right inside him, every part of him laid bare. He was actually shivering now, his rubbed-raw thighs and bursting bladder forgotten. Now the man was dropping the glass cylinder back into his jacket pocket, swiftly retuning his guitar, was starting to play a different song. He began to sing, in an eerie high moan which sounded just like his guitar. “ Got to keep moving, got to keep moving ,” he sang, “ blues falling down like hail. Got to keep moving, got to keep moving, hellhound on my trail .”
Then his daddy was wrenching at his arm, shoving him so he nearly lost his footing and fell. “What you doin’, boy?” his daddy thundered. “I told you be ready to he’p me move these sacks to the car.” He dragged James into the store and set him to moving a sack of cattle-feed near as big as he was to his daddy’s rusted Model T Ford. “I’m sorry, sir,” James said when their cargo was loaded, “I was listening to the man singing.”
Solomon Moon didn’t say a word as he drove them to the barbershop. “I need to pee,” James murmured into the humming void of his father’s grim silence. “You can go at the barbershop,” his father said after a while. He parked the car outside Sam’s Barber Shop, and gripped James by the arm.
“Do you know what that man was doin’?” he rumbled. “He was doin’ the devil’s work. He was tryin’ to drag your soul down to hell.”
“But he was just singin’ and playin’ git-tar,” James protested. “An’ I was just listenin’.”
“The devil live in the git-tar,” growled Solomon Moon. “And the worst music you can play on the git-tar is the blues . That’s what that man was playin’. The blues . The devil’s own music. Every blues singer work for the devil. An’ out of all the blues singers around here, that man is the evillest of ’em all. I spent ten years tryin’ to bring you up right and raise you in the ways of the Lord, and now I find you on the street…”
“But, sir, you done told me to wait there!”
“ Quiet , boy! I find you on the street listening to the man who sold his soul to the devil , just standin’ there not even sayin’ a prayer to save yourself while he try to take your soul too! Boy, when we get home, we gonna have ourselves a talk. ”
James knew what that signified. It would be years before he realised that ‘having a talk’ didn’t always mean getting a whuppin’. In the barbershop, the guys were talking shit and playing the dozens. The air was thick with smoke and a couple of them were taking discreet nips from hip-flasks or brown-bagged bottles. Everything went quiet when the Reverend stalked in with James, his bladder troubling him again, waddling painfully at his daddy’s heels.
“Mornin’, Reverend,” Sam said, “and what can I do for you this fine day?”
“Let the boy use your bathroom an’ then you cut his hair good’n short,” Solomon Moon told him. “I be back for him in an hour, get my own hair cut. And I don’t want him hearin’ nuthin’ that he shouldn’ be hearin.’” He wagged a warning finger at James, turned on his heel and walked out. “Whoah!” said one of the customers. “There surely goes a real, true man of the Lord.” James wasn’t sure why the other men laughed at that.
In the bathroom, he scrabbled frantically at the stiff new denim, splitting a thumbnail attempting to wrest the metal buttons through the unyielding fabric, spotting his fresh overalls before threading his stubbornly retracted li’l thang through the fly, like pulling a marshmallow through a slot machine and, just in time to avoid embarrassing himself by soaking his clothing and puddling the floor, unleashing a gusher so powerful that the sense of relief almost made him pass out. But soon Sam had him safely sat up in the big chair, napkin tied around his throat as the clippers buzzed around his ears and neck. “And what you been doin’ today, young man?” Sam asked him.
“We been in town shoppin’.” James told him. “I got me new overalls and my daddy bought feed and seed from Mr Birnbaum. An’ I saw a man singin’ and playin’ git-tar on the corner, but my daddy got angry.”
Sam laughed. “The man you saw, did he have a real good suit on him? Nice hat? Have kind of a high shaky voice?” James nodded. The men chuckled quietly and gave each other meaningful looks. “That be Little Robert. Just got back to town. He had him a lot of names, ol’ Robert. Been Robert Dodds, Robert Willis, Robert Spencer, but he going by his natural father’s name now.”
“My daddy said Robert