“We used to open for these guys. Where the Churchkey is, that used to be a club, and for some reason they booked a lot of blues. My friend Madison Slim, he had a band called the Night Crawlers. I would work with him. We’d get all these opening act spots, so we would get in there and we would open for Otis Rush, Eddie Taylor, Freddie King. I remember Albert King was in there one time, and I’m walking in with my guitar, and I look. Here comes this huge cat with a huge orange and yellow burl pipe in his mouth. I’m like, ‘Albert, good to see you.’ [Mel drops his voice a few octaves] And he goes, ‘Good to see you too, man.’”
Mel still tells it like he’s surprised it happened. Like he’s the luckiest guy in the room. You’d never know it talking to him, but Mel is a Wisconsin Hall of Fame musician and one of Madison’s most enduring blues artists.
Mel’s story starts in Neenah in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley region. When he was growing up, in the late ’50s and ’60s, you either worked the foundries or paper mill—unless you were one of the handful of millionaires. That contrast didn’t mean much to a young Mel, whose father worked in a factory making printer’s ink.
“There was tremendous disparity of income, but because I grew up there, it didn’t really dawn on me that not every place in the world was like that. So there were guys driving around in Bentleys, and when they were done with their sports cars, there was this guy, Morris Fenskey, he had a radiator shop. He would get those cars cheap when the rich guys got rid of them. I would stop in when I was a kid, I was working as a janitor, and I knew he had old MGs, so I went over. ‘Morris, I hear you got a TC and a TF under all those tires.
“He goes, ‘Yeah.’
“I said, ‘Are you selling any?’
“‘What do you do for a living?’
“‘I’m a janitor.’
“‘I don’t think you can afford these.’”
What was within reach for Mel and his family, however, was music. His father was a barbershopper, his mother a hobby pianist, and as for Mel, “My ma said that before I could walk, I was whistling.” Having a piano in the house led to Mel taking piano lessons at an early age. His piano teacher then gifted him his first stringed instrument: a ukulele. One day, a friend of his teacher visited during a lesson and played guitar. To him, it sounded like a symphony orchestra. At 10 years old, Mel asked his mom for his first guitar. She said yes.
“I started playing folk music and hootenanny, bluegrass stuff. John Duffey and The Country Gentlemen. I think that was the first record I ever bought. When the Beatles came out, we started buying rock and roll records. Then when I was a teenager, I went and saw Howlin’ Wolf, and I was absolutely stunned. I was like, I’m not buying records from British teenagers anymore; I’m gonna start listening to the real dudes.”
Unsold on the idea of making music for a living, Mel looked at his uncle, then a commercial artist in Milwaukee, and saw a model for how art could provide a steady life. It took only one year of majoring in art at UW–Oshkosh to realize it wasn’t for him. He just really wanted to play the blues. In 1973, Mel made the move to Madison, and it wasn’t long before he “started making a lot of racket.”
After getting comfortable opening for major performers, Mel got his chance to step inside the wider world of blues when Calvin “Fuzz” Jones and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, alumni of Muddy Waters’ band, were touring with the newly formed The Legendary Blues Band. Billy Flynn, a Green Bay-born bluesman who joined the band in the late ’80s, was among the guitarists on those tours. When Billy couldn’t make a show while touring in the South, Mel got the call, and with it, a seat on the big stage.
Mel says, “It was really an eye-opener because you can listen to that music, you can go see it all you want, but when you’re on stage with them, it’s a whole different animal. This music isn’t something that you can generate with a computer. The backbeat is dragged—it’ll speed up or slow down as just part of the format. It’s deep.”
Though he could lose himself in the music at night, by morning, he was back to work. Whether pounding a loading dock or driving a semi to deliver car batteries, Mel preferred work that was physical and straightforward. The music was never for the money, and the work was never for the spotlight.
“Sometimes I would get kind of tuckered out,” says Mel. “I’d come home, lay down for an hour, then jump up and go play my gig. I was most tired when I was a stay-at-home dad because I had a weekly Wednesday; a weekly Thursday; and then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Andy Linderman, Westside Andy, he’d have me booked somewhere. … My hat is off to any and all caregivers, stay-at-home parents, and anybody taking care of their relatives. I was never so tired in my whole life.”
For 72 years, connection has always driven Mel—at home, at work, and onstage. He looks back on how his hand played out, on being a white guy in a predominantly Black space, thinking about politics and racism and his dad serving in an integrated unit in the Army, and charmingly says, “I guess I’m lucky. I’m really lucky.”
Kyle Jacobson is a writer who believes “Time” heals all wounds, as does most of Pink Floyd’s catalog.
Photographs by Eric Tadsen. Thank you to Stoughton Opera House for being a fantastic location for our photo shoot!
Mel currently performs with several acts, including:
Johnny Chimes
johnnychimes.com
BirdDogBlues
facebook.com/birddogbluesband
Cash Box Kings
cashboxkings.com