Diary Of A Busker Day 229 Tuesday May 1st 2012 Winchester High Street 1. Opposite Vodafone. Time: 1:50-2:40pm, 2. Opposite Fat Face. Time: 4:57-6:13pm
The day gets off to a good start. I get 6p from a woman when I’m tuning up, before I even start. A few minutes in, Otto turns up, unusually sober. In fact, I don’t recognise him at first as I’ve never seen him walk straight. He’s not completely sober though – I can smell some alcoholic about his person. But he seems almost, God forbid, normal. He wants to give me a £2 coin but I’d rather not take anything as he’s been a bit of a nuisance in the past and I’ve had to ask him to leave me be a few times. I try to get him to reduce the amount – ‘That’s a lot, Otto. I have change , you know?’ ‘No – the government’s feeding me. After they fuck you up, then they…’ his sentence disappears as he walks off. The old lady in the electric wheelchair trundles by. I always seem to be playing The Third Man when she turns up – ‘There he is, playing it again!’ she always says before chuckling. I’m not playing it now, though. I suddenly think – I should get a photo of her for my album? Why not, I see her around enough. I get her to stop and I ask her name, which I don’t know but I’ve got to have a name next to the photo. It’s Maureen – finally I know! She’s happy to pose, which saves me a bit of time persuading her. I tell her about the photo album and some of the other people in it, like Delia, who won’t tell me her age. ‘Neither will I!’ she laughs. Then, of all people, Delia turns up! I introduce them to each other and then Maureen’s off. Delia stays for a chat about a number of things…somehow we get on to Mrs. Thatcher. ‘I would kill her…what she did. I remember once. I had three grandchildren behind me. We were in a shop and one of them wanted a little thing, you know and I couldn’t buy them anything. That’s when I was widowed for the second time…her son Mark, he’s a crook, they won’t even let him back in…but she, you know…she made thirty million from that Arab country…’ Delia gets out her old sweet tin and we go through the old routine, ‘No Delia – you don’t have to.’ ‘Yes I do!’ ‘No, you don’t have much…at least let me give you some change.’ Okay, a £2 coin – I give her a pound back. I’ll see her on Friday, I say.
Otto comes back and he’s back to his usual self – off his face (he’s only been away half an hour!) and it’s all familiar stuff. He sits down next to me, ‘Hey!…pley some Chuck Berry.’ OK, I say I’ll play a bit but afterwards I’ve got to do my usual stuff. ‘Yeh, yeh!…jus’… Chuck Berry…some rock ‘n roll!’ So he gets his usual Johnny B. Goode intro, extended a few more seconds, then ‘That’s all I know, Otto – Okay?’ ‘Yeh, yeh…’ I go into La Vie En Rose and then something quite remarkable happens. Halfway through, a man walks by, and, as he’s 20 feet down the road, turns and says in an American accent ‘You know any Merle Travis?’ I look at him and there’s something really odd – I know him. Or rather, I know who he is. It’s Duck Baker, the legendary fingerstyle guitar picker! I’m sure of it! Well, this is unbelievable – half an hour ago, I was playing his arrangement of Georgia On My Mind, and now he’s here, in Winchester, a few down the road from me. My brain sort of stops and I forget who Merle Travis is and think Duck Baker has said Merle Haggard, who was a singer. So I say something like, ‘I don’t know…I just play instrumental stuff.’ Then he says, ‘Well you were – just now, playing that…’ Of course! I was playing Chet Atkin’s arrangement of La Vie En Rose, which is Travis picking! I suddenly realise and stutter, ‘Oh yeah, um… yeah, I do a couple, umm…’ – but can’t remember what they’re called because my brain’s still not working! Then I remember I sometimes do Travis’s Dance Of The Goldenrod – yeah, I’ll do that one! I play the first part of the verse, then mess it up. Duck doesn’t recognise it, I say the name. ‘Oh yeah,’ he says, walking off. Then I remember Cannonball Rag – Merle Travis’s signature song. I play a few bars and shout out ‘Cannonball Rag!’ He walks back. I say, ‘You’re a lot like an American, um…do you play the guitar?’ ‘Hi, I’m Duck Baker, yeah, give me a call sometime,’ and he hands me his card. My brain’s still stopped but we have a chat. I thought he lived in America. He says he spends a lot of time over here, now – he lives in Reading. I tell him the Focal Dystonia section of my ‘hard luck story’ – I can’t recall his response. I show him my/his arrangement of Georgia On My Mind, photocopied and taped together in my songbook. ‘Well, you can play it as I’m walking up the street – I might see you on the way back, anyway.’ And with that, the great Duck Baker walks off. And then, a terrible thing happens which I could have predicted. I start the song – Duck Baker’s arrangement, and destroy it. Completely. There’s nothing to be done about it. It’s one of those moments when you want the ground to open and swallow you up. And then, after he’s disappeared, I see my camera, totally forgotten in my starstruck confusion, lying on the pavement. I haven’t even got a picture to prove I met Duck Baker, one of the great fingerstyle guitarists of his bloody generation, and the only one of my idols I will ever meet (as he’s the only one still alive). What an idiot I am. I could kick myself to death. I become morose and think ‘another missed opportunity.’ What to do… . I decide to stay here, in case he comes back and then I’ll get a photo…but he doesn’t. But I can’t tear myself away although I really should, after all, the guys in Vodafone must be getting pretty bored with me. I have an idea. I’ll move up a bit, to the other side of the street so they can’t see me and where they can’t hear me as much. So now, I’m about 40 feet up from Vodafone with, for the first time ever, the sun on me. I play and keep looking up the street, to my right to see if the great genius Duck is coming back down. I’ll know if it’s him – quite tall with a blue T-shirt. Time passes by…Jeremy turns up and I tell him the story of my extraordinary meeting and missed opportunity. Jeremy’s an ignoramus and has never heard of him and points out that I’m probably the only person here today that would recognise him. He’s probably right but that doesn’t mean the high street’s not full of ignoramus’s. Jeremy spends a few minutes consoling me then he’s off…time passes…it’s getting late and there’s not many ignoramus’s about. A girl on a bike slowly pedals past then turns around and comes back and gives me a donation for which I thank her and say I’ll play the bike song – Bicycle Built For Two (from my Merle Travis book) but I’ve forgotten the name. I hunt for the music…I find it. ‘Here it is, you know – “Daisy, Daisy”…bicycle built for two, you know that one? – it’s really old.’ She says she doesn’t know it. I play the simple intro and I’m about to go into the up-tempo, Travis picking verse, when…he’s here – Duck Baker! Come to say ‘hello’ again! Quick, think QUICK!! (I think). ‘Please, Mr. Baker, will you pose for a picture?’ I give the girl my camera, which this time I remember, and explain the situation – ‘This is Duck Baker! He’s the MAN! Just press this button, here.’ We pose, me and the internationally renowned D. Baker, for a picture, then I have a moment of pure inspiration – maybe Duck Baker would agree to hold my guitar. I put it to him…and he DOES agree to hold my guitar! After the first picture, the girl says, ‘Oh, the light’s a bit bright, maybe you could move over here…’ Don’t worry about that – just get the bloody picture! So, she takes another one, so all together, I’ve got three photos of me and Duck: one of just us and two of us with the great picker holding my Epiphone Casino. I once again press on our photographer (who doesn’t know him) the importance of the situation – ‘This is Duck Baker – he’s one hundred times better than me!’ ‘Oh,’ she says, then to the great Baker, ‘Maybe you can play a song?’ But no, he politely declines – he’s in a hurry and has to go back home. He says again, ‘Give me a call sometime,’ and is off. I (again) think fast…what should Duck Baker hear, as he walks off down an almost deserted Winchester High Street. Hmm…of course! – what else but a bit of Travis picking in the shape of the theme from The Third Man – what else?! Famous guitar player or not, no day out in Winchester would be complete without a bit of The Third Man aka The Harry Lime Theme played by me – MBN, as you’re walking off home.
Earnings: £36.59p (possibly including a £1 coin from Duck Baker – legendary American jazz/blues/folk fingerstyle guitarist genius of American birth, residing in Reading)
Duck Baker