I still remember the first time I saw this photo. It was the mid-late 90's and I saw it, apropos of nothing really, dropped in some empty white space of a Crypt Records catalog. Like he did with most of the catalog's photos, Tim Warren had added his own word bubbles. I don't remember exactly what the guy front and center was saying—something about how he would rather die than have a son that grew up to listen to disco? I better remember an image from the catalog of Link Wray saying "MotherFUCK the Squares!"
Here we are 15 or so years later and judging by its popularity online, the already timeless image has had its life-lease extended yet again. I guess I'm now a small part of that.
Leroi Jones explains:
during the heyday of rhythm & blues, blues-oriented instrumentalists, usually saxophone players, would vie to see who could screech, or moan, or shout the loudest and longest on their instruments.Men like Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Illinois Jacquet, Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, Big Jay McNeeley, Lynn Hope, and many others would have "honking" contests and try to outshout and outstomp any other saxophonist who would dare challenge them. Finally, when most of the "honkers", as they were called, had reached a similar competence, the contests got more athletic. Jay McNeeley used to lie on his back and kick his feet in the air while honking one loud screeching note or a series of identical riffs. The riff itself was the basis for this kind of playing, the saophonist repeating the riff much past any useful musical context, continuing it until he and the crowd were thoroughly exhausted physically and emotionally.
Kerouac described experiencing a similar scene:
Out we jumped in the warm mad night hearing a wild tenorman bawling horn across the way going “EE-YAH! EE-YAH! EE-YAH!” and hands clapping to the beat and folks yelling “Go, go, go!” Far from escorting the girls into the place Neal was already racing across the street with his thumb in the air yelling “Blow, man, blow!” A bunch of colored men in Saturday night suits were whooping it up in front. It was a sawdust saloon, all wood, with a small bandstand near the john on which the fellows huddled with their hats on blowing over people’s heads, a crazy place. The behatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from “EE-yah!” to a crazier “EE-de-lee-yah!” and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bullneck who didn’t give a damn about anything but punishing his tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom crash. Uproars of music and the tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. Neal was clutching his head in the crowd and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging that tenorman to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes; and he was raising himself from a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above the furor. A six foot skinny Negro woman was rolling her bones at the man’s hornbell, and he just jabbed it at her, “Ee! ee! ee!” He had a foghorn tone; his horn was taped; he was a shipyard worker and he didn’t care. Everybody was rocking and roaring. Helen and Julie with beer in their hands were standing on their chairs shaking and jumping. Groups of colored guys stumbled in from the street falling over each other to get there. “Stay with it man!” roared a man with a foghorn voice, and let out a big groan that must have been heard clear out in Sacramento, ah-haa!
