AN
INTERVIEW WITH JESS HOOPER
By Billy Miller
From KICKS Magazine – Issue # 3 (1984)
Yes, Virginia, there is a Jess Hooper. For some time it was believed that Jess‘ "All Messed Up"/"Sleepy Time Blues" (Meteor 5025) was Charlie Feathers moonlighting during his Sun days. It sure as hell sounded like him and to add fuel to the fire, Charlie never said it WASN'T him.
Now, KICKS gives the
real Jess Hooper a shot at unravelling the mysteries behind one of the
coolest
and most elusive platters to ever grace a hi-fi.
I gave Jess a buzz at
home in Texas and although he wasn't a whirlwind of facts and dates, I
found
him to be an unassuming, friendly guy who was glad to hear that people
still
dug him...
Billy: Hi.
Er, is this Jess Hooper?
Jess:
Yes, it is.
Billy:
Jess, my name' s Billy and I'm doing a series
of articles on some of the early rockabilly singers and I'm a big fan
of
"All Messed Up". Wou1d you
mind if I asked you a few questions about it’?
Jess: Sure,
uh huh.
Billy: Okay, how’d you start in music?
Jess:
Oh, I dunno. I was just a young boy out of
the service, playing with a little group out of Memphis.
Billy: That‘
s where you're from?
Jess: No, I‘m from a little town called Marks,
Mississippi about
65 miles south of Memphis. Mostly I did gigs around Memphis and through
northern Mississippi. Not anything big. We copied some of the big
country stars
and did our own rockabilly stuff. Now I
think I like the blues best but we weren' t doing any back then.
Billy: Who
were you working with at the time?
Jess: God, I
don‘t remember offhand. (Laughs) There was
one guy I remember - Billy
Riley. He played guitar for me.
Billy: Oh,
wow!
Jess: Yeah,
he and I worked together. Then he came out
with a song, "The
Green Hen" or something.
Billy: The
Little Green Men was his band.
Jess: Right,
the song went real big for him back
then.
Billy: You
mean "Red Hot".
Jess: Yeah,
like I said, it did real good for him,
‘course I didn' t stay in it long, and I got right out of it. Now I'm trying to get back in it again,
but
that's kinda hard to do.
Billy: Before
you made the record, did you try Sun?
Jess: No, I
didn' t try Sun. There was a number of
other companies there
and believe it or not as the saying goes, I went studio to studio
looking for
an audition. I didn' t have a band at
the time. I was just the walkin’ the streets.
Billy: What
labels did you try?
Jess: Oh,
I've forgotten ‘em by now. Just little
labels.
Billy: So
what happened when you got to Meteor?
Jess: Oh, when I got to Meteor, um, he listened to it
and said yes
and told me to come back in a week, I believe it was, and he had a band
there.
Billy:
So that wasn't your performing band on the
record?
Jess: No, uh
some of ‘em was. Billy Riley.
Billy: He's
on the record?
Jess: He's
the one playing the lead guitar.
Billy: Great.
It's a nice sound he had.
Jess: Uh
huh. Sure is.
Billy: Do you
recall the other guys on it?
Jess: Uh,
well, I got it written down. Hang on.
(Goes and looks) Hello, Bill,
believe it or not, here's one of my old songbooks.
I was messin' with some songs when you ca1led. Now the group was
Clyde Rush -- I don’t know what they was playin’ -- then you had Tommy
Sealy,
Bill Turant, and Miller Toe and Johnny Tate.
Billy: They
were guys that Meteor hired?
Jess: I
think they were, although some of ‘em
were new and I think they were out lookin' for some gigs too.
Billy: Did you record more than just the two
titles?
Jess: No, I didn't. That one
record was all I did.
Billy: But I
mean did you record any more songs at
the Meteor session?
Jess: We
taped out...gosh, seven or eight songs
and he picked those out.
Billy: What
songs were they?
Jess:
Gosh, one of ‘em was "Diamonds and
Gold." (Pauses)
Billy: They
were all your songs?
Jess: Yeah,
all mine. I wrote ‘em and copyrighted
them. ‘Course "All Messed Up" and "Sleepy Time
Blues" was released but I don't remember the others.
(Further
correspondence with Jess has revealed that in addition to the three
titles
mentioned, the following were a also cut at the Meteor session:
"Afraid", "This Heart Is Dying Tonight", and "I Think
My Baby’s Gone". Jess recalled two
other originals from the fifties - "I Am A Sinner" and "Well,
Don't You Think", but he wasn't sure if they were recorded for Meteor.)
Billy: “All Messed Up” wasn’t
also released on
Cherry, was it?
Jess: I heard somebody say
it was, but they didn’t
have any rights to it.
Billy: It was a bootleg, I
guess about ten years
ago.
Jess: Yeah, no, that only
came out on Meteor.
Billy: Jess,
are you aware that for years people
thought “All Messed Up” was sung by Charlie Feathers going under the
name Jess
Hooper?
Jess: No, I didn’t. Charlie Feathers?
Billy: You never heard of
him?
Jess: No.
Charlie Feathers?
Billy: He
was a Memphis musician who was on Sun and
he had one on Meteor called “Tongue Tied Jill”.
Your styles are so similar people assumed that “All Messed Up”
was Charlie.
Jess: Ha! Is that right?
Billy: In
fact I’ve got an album here of Charlie's
songs and it includes your two cuts. (THE LIVING LEGEND – Redita 107)
Jess: It
does?
Billy:
Yeah, and the back cover says that "the
fact that Charlie could get away with recording under another name
testifies to
the number of people who were copying him."
Jess: I didn’t know that.
Of course, I left Memphis soon after that
and wasn’t aware of what was goin’ on, but he definitely did not have
the
authority to do that.
Billy: No,
Feathers didn't do this. A collector put
this out and just assumed it
was him singing.
Jess:
Oh, I see.
Billy: So you left Memphis just as rock & roll
was gaining steam.
Jess: Yes, l
moved to Texas.
Billy: Did
you continue playing?
Jess:
We did a few gigs and then I kinda dropped
out of the whole thing.
Billy: Were
you doing mostly country in Texas?
Jess:
Oh, mostly I still did the things from
Memphis days. Actually, I’m working on blues stuff right now. I like the blues – Southern blues. It’s out of style but I like to mess with
it. I’m writing quite a few songs
now.
(Jess and
1 talk about publishing, then we get back to "All Messed Up".)
Jess: I
don't even know where the record of it
is. I been divorced several times,
moved across the country 4 or 5 times, and in the process everything's
been
lost, you know.
Billy: Did
you think you had a good record on your
hands at the time?
Jess:
Yeah, I was happy with it. It did
quite well for me, but I didn't make
any money out of it. I did real good at
the radio station in Clarkesdale, Mississippi, where 1 was really
working at
the time. They did a lot for me. I played with some of the country bands that
came through the auditoriums and things for about a year before 1
dropped out.
Billy: Did
you ever play with any of the Sun acts?
Jess:
No, of course Elvis was at Sun at the time,
and some of the other Memphis labels had good acts, but no, I didn't
play with
any of them. 'Course then Carl Perkins
came in.
Billy: Did
you know Junior Thompson who did
"Raw Deal" on Meteor?
Jess: Nope.
Billy: So
aside from Billy Lee Riley you had no
association with any Sun artist?
Jess: There
was 3 or 4 labels I tried. I didn't go up
to Sun…well, I did go to
Sun's secretary but I couldn't get in the door.
At that time, Sun was boomin'...what was his name, Phillips or
somethin' like that?
Billy: Sam
Phillips.
Jess: Yeah,
Sam Phillips. It‘s kinda like today. I've written to I guess 75 people on my
music, but most of 'em nowadays aren't
interested in outside material at all.
I guess the business is pretty rough.
You know, I pretty well got out of it, but now my blood's
steerin' again
and I've written 40-50 songs lately. I
guess
I'm too old to get on the big end of it, but I enjoy it.
You ever hear my song "All Messed
Up" getting played up
there?
Billy: Not on
radio, but a lot of people consider
it one of the best rockabilly songs of all time, plus I know a couple
of bands
that do it.
Jess: At
least it's nice to know you're still
around in some people's eyes. That was about 30 years ago!
Billy: The
record's still great!
Jess: I
guess that's true. I appreciate that, Bill.