Maya Payne Smart : Mac Arnold Profile

Striking a Chord

A well-travelled blues musician reinvents himself as a front man and educator

By Maya Payne Smart

It’s a typical Sunday at bluesman Mac Arnold’s place in Pelzer. His dog, Buster, marks time on the back porch with his tail while friends and family members stir within the house. Arnold’s wife, Vonda, is putting the finishing touches on a dinner of collard greens, mashed potatoes, chicken and cornbread. Well-timed jokes and peels of laughter season the gathering. “We’re going country-style today,” she says nodding toward sweet tea-filled mason jars on the countertop. “That’s your fine China.”

The meal follows a band practice of Mac Arnold & Plate Full O’ Blues, but even without instruments the group—with Arnold as its leader and namesake—would find reason enough to gather round the Arnold kitchen and one another. Their effortless collaboration is something like Vonda’s cornbread—instinctive and full of flavor. No recipes or sheet music define their dinner or their musical style.

Arnold says grace, and silence falls as the mouths around the table trade conversation for food. The quiet interlude is brief. Arnold gives an impromptu performance of “Grandma’s Muffins,” a light-hearted ditty he made up earlier in the day. The songs emerge organically like the greens, corn, beans, peas, okra, sweet potatoes, zucchini, squash and peanuts Arnold grows in his four-acre garden. “Oh, I can’t wait to taste grandma’s muffins,” he sings in rich but raspy tones punctuated by periodic bursts of laughter. It’s a fitting soundtrack for a down-home meal shared among friends.

To the uninitiated, the cheerfulness seems discordant with the creation of blues. But Arnold quickly dismisses the notion. While the blues may have emerged from difficult circumstances, the music has never been about negativity, he says. He should know. A lifetime ago in the clubs of Chicago, he played bass with blues legends including Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton and John Lee Hooker.

Now in his second act, the 66-year-old has moved to center stage as the front man of a line-blurring blues band that aspires to be an instrument of change as well as of music. Throughout the year, they perform at schools and arts festivals to educate and inspire new audiences with the traditional American music. “It’s a different twist because at my age now I feel that we are in the right direction for more than playing blues and being entertainers,” he says. “I can do something good for society, our community, and the children.”

Educators agree. Jayne Lee, the principal of Stewart Heights Elementary, in Dillon describes Arnold as a “dynamic” and “a very positive role model.” He and the band made such an impression on her school—children and teachers alike—last year that she’s invited them back to perform for all 420 students again. “It gave the children exposure to rhythm and blues and history and the opportunity to see and hear a band,” she says. “We try to expose them to musicians, artists, illustrators, authors so in the future they may choose to follow suit.”

Indeed, Mac Arnold has much to teach. Seated at the kitchen table, his whole body seems attuned to the turns and tones of the music. His lean frame arcs toward the neck of the handmade guitar. The corners of his eyes crinkle in anticipation of the lyric’s next sentiment.

Both the musical instrument and the song harken back to Arnold’s youth, much of which was spent on the same land that his current home rests upon. His older brother, Leroy, introduced him to music though radio broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry in the '40s. The twanging sound of banjos and the violins crying captured his attention as a child. It was his brother’s creativity in fashioning a guitar from an old gasoline can, some window screen wire, hoe handles and flatware that paved the way for Arnold’s music career. The handmade guitar Arnold now plays during part of his school presentation is a 1950s replica of Leroy’s 1947 creation.

This is a history lesson meant to inspire a brighter future though. The band’s songs have messages of hope, perseverance and delayed gratification. The title track "Backbone & Gristle," shares some of the advice and admonishment that Arnold’s father gave his young son as he came of age in a family of 13. Another track "I Can Do Anything," urges youth to stay in school in order to reach their great potential. “The children need a message,” Arnold says. “One little word sometimes will change the minds of a kid and send him in the direction of doing something good for the rest of his life.”

By high school, Arnold himself was performing as a part of J. Floyd and the Shamrocks. He brushed with greatness way back then when the group was joined on occasion by future soul legend James Brown. By 1965 though, Arnold felt the urge to strike out on his own as a professional musician and headed for the Windy City. "Chicago was the place that all the blues singers went," he says. "I used to listen to them from an old makeshift radio station broadcast from Ware Place, the neighborhood food market. They never did come to this area, so I figured the only way to see them was to go there."

He quickly became a regular part of the blues scene there, performing on Blue Monday, a night each week when blues musicians hopped from venue to venue for a chance to play a song or two. In no time, he performed and recorded with many of the musicians he'd admired from afar. He went to school to learn to read music and began to do studio work. Arnold estimates that he played with 95 percent of the blues musicians in Chicago from 1964 to 1968. He won credits on timeless recordings including John Lee Hooker’s Live at the Café Au Go-Go and Otis Spann’s The Blues is Where It’s At.

Of all the Chicago musicians, he says Muddy Waters distinguished himself most with his music and his character. Arnold played bass and traveled with the blues legend for more than a year, crisscrossing North America from Vancouver to San Diego to Miami to Massachusetts. He fondly recalls Waters' ongoing competition with bluesman Howlin' Wolf to assemble the most talented band and the high standards of conduct and musicianship he demanded. "He made sure that everyone was comfortable and a part of what he was about," Arnold says. "He was respectful of people that were interested in his music, and he expected his musicians to be an example he could be proud of."

By late 1967, Arnold had tired of the grueling coast-to-coast travel with the Muddy Waters Band and started his own group, The Soul Invaders. The Chicago band accompanied acts including B.B. King and The Temptations. "We stepped it up a bit and started playing more R&B," Arnold says. "It was more electronic than blues at that time now blues has gotten more electric."

Soon after, Arnold found himself on the soul train, literally, when Don Cornelius, a Chicago disc jockey, approached him about helping to launch the first black music variety show to air on American television. Arnold moved to Los Angeles and worked as an associate producer of Soul Train for four years. Once again, he made history. While in L.A., he continued to do studio work, most notably playing bass on the Sanford and Son theme song.

By the mid-'70s, he’d moved behind the scenes and begun work as a cameraman, videotape editor and film chain operator for ABC and 20th Century Fox. "It was a very interesting era of my life, very exploratory because I knew nothing about television," Arnold says. "So I went to college to learn the fundamentals."

South Carolina began calling him home after his father passed in 1982. Arnold returned to Pelzer in December of 1990 and the rest is, well, history. A chance encounter brought Arnold and harmonica player Max Hightower together in the mid-'90s and Hightower spent the next 10 years coaxing Arnold out of retirement and finding the right combination of musicians to back him up.

Today Mac Arnold and Plate Full O’ Blues consists of Danny Keylon on bass; Austin Brashier on guitar; Hightower on keyboards, harmonica and guitar; and Mike Whitt on drums, with Arnold providing lead vocals. They come from diverse musical backgrounds—beach, rock, bluegrass—but have forged a signature blues sound under Arnold’s tutelage. It seems that he’s teaching even within the group.

“People as young as me and Austin had to stumble upon blues; we heard them and were drawn to them and never let go of them,” says Hightower, who is half Arnold’s age. “We cherish working with someone like Mac Arnold; we don’t take it for granted. It’s one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me.”

After dinner, practice ramps up again with an electric version of "Grandma’s Muffins." Arnold stands facing the band members rocking in cowboys boots and jeans. A microphone is in hand instead of the gas can guitar that carried the tune during dinner, and Arnold is still very much at home.