piano as decoy 2004

piano as decoy
Originally published 5/24/2004

My system was to use the piano as a decoy. I’d get a job at one of those honky-tonks along the Gulf Coast, playing piano, then some local boys who called themselves good would ask me to play a game of pool. My system was different from most of the piano players I met along the coast – Skinny Head Pete and Florida Sam. They didn’t work because they were kept up by women. – Jelly Roll Morton

That jibes well with Honeyboy Edwards' account in his marvelous book, The World Don't Owe Me Nothing. He explains, I had three ways of making it: the women, the music and the dice.

He would go to a joint and play music only until he had enough money to get into the dice game, where he would make his real money. Or to impress a woman, and get a place to stay. Musicians now think the music is supposed to be the main thing. But traditionally, it wasn’t.