14 CHICAGO READER | MARCH 31, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Our Town

undoubtedly due to Smiley’s celebri-ty, but Madhubuti thinks it’s also atestament to the public’s desire forinformation and direction. “Peopleare not buying this book to put it onthe shelf,” he says. “It is the righttime for this kind of book.”

Coates goes a step further. Helikens the response to the outpour-ing of support for the Million ManMarch a decade ago. “There arethese tremendous bursts of blackenergy, and eventually they willbecome something,” he says. “Wemay not be there yet, but this is aclear opportunity.” v

Music

God’s Got theLast WordBut the blues scene rallied toput in a good one for singer,minister, activist, and one-time pimp Little Scotty.

By David Whiteis

T he Godfather arrived in style.Emerging from a white stretchlimo in front of East of the

Ryan on Sunday, March 19, thesouth-side scenester and aspiring R& B vocalist sauntered into the clubdraped in a luxurious car coat andclutching a bejeweled drinking cup.Inside, a group of matronly womensitting near the stage, sipping fruitjuice and still dressed for church,barely glanced at him. But they tooknote of the many other musical fig-ures who arrived for the show, abenefit for Clarence “Little Scotty”Scott: Otis Clay, Artie “Blues Boy”White, Bobby Jonz, Lee “Shot”Williams, and Little Smokey

Smothers, among others.As the musicians clustered toward

the back of the club, WHPK DJArkansas Red, clad in a white suitand red bow tie, handed out flyersfor his radio show while CarolynAlexander—a sprightly womanknown as the Blues Lady and theQueen of Maxwell Street—satbehind a video camera that wasperched on a rickety tripod. Scotthimself couldn’t make the party,though. Last October, after sufferingfrom headaches and dizzy spells, hecollapsed in his south-side apart-ment. He was soon diagnosed with abrain tumor and spent a month atMichael Reese Hospital recuperat-ing after surgery. He eventuallyreturned home, but in late Januaryrespiratory problems landed himback in the hospital. He’s now atKindred Hospital—Chicago, wherehe’s on a ventilator. He has no healthinsurance, his home phone has beendisconnected, and his landlord istrying to evict him.

“We all seem to come togetherwhen these kinds of things happen,”Clay said from the stage during thefirst set. “If you think you got prob-lems, I got the report on Scotty—that’s a problem. So this will be ourtheme song tonight.” He thenlaunched into his inspirational sig-nature tune, “If I Could Reach Out(and Help Somebody),” and theaudience responded with affirma-tions and applause.

Most events at East of the Ryan, on79th Street, attract at least a handfulof people from outside the neighbor-hood. But though Little Scotty’s beenubiquitous on the south-side bluesscene since the early 80s, he’s virtual-ly unknown among white blues fansin the city. If they know him at all, it’sas the squat, frog-faced black guywith the sleepy eyes and thick south-ern drawl who shows up at demon-strations and other public eventsdecked out with an array of buttons:plugs for Harold Washington’s may-oral campaigns, portraits of Jesse

Jackson and Louis Farrakhan, anti-war and antidrug slogans, and manymore. But on his home turf he’snotorious for the audacity of his performances. There aren’t manysingers, even in blues, who’ll seguefrom an X-rated celebration of cunnilingus to a sermon on commu-nity uplift. But navigating the earthlyand the divine has been Scott’s

lifelong survival strategy.In the early 60s, when he was

about 15, the KKK firebombed hisfamily’s home in Florence, SouthCarolina. Scott suffered third-degreeburns on most of his body. “I proba-bly had over 90 operations,” he toldme in 2003. “Blood ’fusions, graftingskin. People used to die, and whenthey died they cut the skin off ’em,

continued from page 13

Little Scotty in 1998 at Junior Wells’s funeral

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[snip] So who’s the pope of academia? Writing in the ultracon-servative Catholic periodical First Things, theologian EdwardOakes of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake critiques WhatJesus Meant and purports to teach its author, Garry Wills, a lessonin logic: “The two great institutional legacies of the Middle Ages tomodern civilization are the Catholic Church and the contemporary

university, of which the latter is surely the more rigidly hierarchi-cal: With its politically correct orthodoxies, its hegemonicallyimposed anti-hegemonic discourse, its salary-mongering, its free-dom from taxation (how Constantinian!), its speech codes, itsteacher evaluations . . . the contemporary university makes theCatholic Church look like a Quaker meeting house.” —HH

and I got the skin. They had a wormout of Africa—maggots. They’d put iton you and [it would] eat the deadskin and drop on the floor, and Iwould look at it and just holler,scream like bloody murder.”

Scott was teased relentlessly by theneighborhood kids, but he foundrefuge both in church and at localjuke joints, where he sat alone steel-ing his courage before finally takingthe stage, astonishing listeners withhis commanding, gospel-honedvoice. Inspired by the acceptance hereceived as a singer—not to mentionthe money—he soon hit the chitlin’circuit. Though he insists he neverlost his faith in God, he stillimmersed himself in the fast timeshis new life offered. By the end of the60s he was living in New York City,where he was an ordained ministerand worked as a pimp. “I had four orfive girls working for me,” he said.“Had a beautiful apartment, 17th and8th Avenue in Chelsea.”

But he had a more sober side aswell: he studied Islam and took inlectures and speeches by black histo-ry scholars like John Henrik Clarkeand Leonard Jeffries. When hearrived in Chicago in the early 80s(“to pursue music and ministry”) hegot involved with Operation PUSH,Harold Washington’s mayoral cam-paigns, anti-death-penalty initia-tives, and other causes. He kept hismusic career going too: he cutrecords in soul, contemporary blues,and gospel styles for a variety oflabels, including his own Top of theWorld imprint; performed in localclubs; and occasionally embarked ona brief tour through the south oralong his old stomping grounds on

the east coast.Scott never became so righteous

that he wouldn’t do whatever hethought it took to get his musicplayed. [A prominent Boston DJ]“was my man,” he once told me.“Take him some cocaine, and he’llplay your records from now on!”And his friend Gene “Daddy G”Barge recalls that Scott would showup at PUSH headquarters preparedto receive as well as give. “He was avendor out there, selling hisrecords, pop, water, peanuts, andall of that stuff,” Barge says.“Everybody, Jesse Jackson andeverybody, went out there to buypeanuts from him.”

Scott’s most recent album, God’sGot the Last Word, came out onStyle Records in 2004. Its center-piece is a 20-minute-plus sermonwhere he recounts the ordeal of hisburning in harrowing detail; by theend he’s audibly weeping as anorgan billows and swells aroundhim. That same year, on March 6,his wife, Ada Allen, was strangled inan alley a few blocks from theirhome. The funeral was held at HolyRock Missionary Baptist Church on59th and Morgan, and the receptionwas at Lee’s Unleaded Blues, whereScott greeted well-wishers frombehind hooded eyes, showing littleoutward sign of grief or even emo-tion. When I encountered him a fewweeks later on Canal Street, though,he seemed exhausted. “I beenthrough a lot, man,” he told me. “Ibeen through a lot.”

“His appearance either was ablessing or a bummer, because a lotof the people regarded him as a cari-cature rather than a serious act,”

Barge says. “The comment wasabout size and his looks and theburning. He’s a good singer, man. Hecouldn’t catch a break.”

Jonz, White, and Clay, whoorganized the benefit, interspersedtheir performances with requestscontinued on page 16

Boutique of the Week

When Stefani Greenfield and Uzi Ben-Abraham openedthe first Scoop in New York ten years ago, the idea

was to create the “ultimate closet—the best of the best ofthe best.” That meant, in their view, a mix of high and lowwest-coast-influenced styles. Now they’ve brought their

terrifically successful retail formu-la to Chicago. The key word hereis formula—the only difference inwhat they order from store tostore has to do with seasonal

merchandise. The chain is at least partly responsible forthose swarms of Trixies teetering around urban America inheels with jeans, but when you’re talking 10,000 carefullyedited square feet of the latest trends there’s somethingfor every kind of consumer. At the March 24 opening of the

Scoop

Scoop1702 N. Milwaukee773-227-9930

The Jimmy Choos

Wicker Park store, I eyeballed a geeky-hot navy Marc Jacobsshift with a cowl back and a breast pocket for $1,440, green Theory short shorts for $120, and velvety rust-coloredflip-flops for $28. One sleek shelving unit is devoted to adenim selection priced from $100 to over $300, anothermostly to dangerous-looking Jimmy Choos. This is the firstScoop to carry men’s, women’s, and children’s clothingunder one roof; men’s offerings tend toward the understat-ed, like black knit shirts by John Varvatos and smooth cot-ton chinos by Michael Kors, and kid stuff ranges from sweetcotton sundresses to sweatshirts silk-screened with JimMorrison’s visage. For sustenance after a long day exercis-ing the Visa, there’s also a cafe offering sandwiches, salads,biscotti, and of course those trendiest of baked goods: cup-cakes. —Heather Kenny

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[snip] Loyalty ain’t cheap. United Airlines, justout of bankruptcy but hardly out of the woods,has given its CEO, Glenn Tilton, stock worthabout $30 million and each of its mechanicsstock worth about $20,000, reports Crain’sChicago Business. The company says this pro-

gram “is designed to directly align the interestsof the new shareholders of United and the man-agement team.” Evidently United’s board thinksTilton needs 29,980,000 more reasons to put thecompany ahead of his own personal intereststhan does the average airline mechanic. —HH

CHICAGO READER | MARCH 31, 2006 | SECTION ONE 15

16 CHICAGO READER | MARCH 31, 2006 | SECTION ONE

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for donations. A cardboard box clad in tinfoil sat just inside theentrance, another near the band-stand. Jonz periodically removedhandfuls of crumpled bills from theboxes. By the end of the night he’dcollected $800 for Scott. (Clay saysanother benefit is in the works, butplans aren’t finalized.)

“You have to understand art toreally understand Scotty,” Otis Clay says. “He got some otherthings going on, but he’s a goodartist. And that says a lot. What youdo about your work dictates a lotabout your personality. I met Scottyprobably around 1980, ’81, whenScotty came to town. One night,one of those off nights, we were inthis little place. And he did‘Hoodoo Man Blues,’ and I’m sayin’,like, ‘Whoa!’ You probably willnever hear it like that again.

“He’s a piece of the puzzle of thisscene. We’ve lost a lot of pieces, youknow? But now Johnnie Taylor’sgone. [Little] Milton. Tyrone [Davis]is gone. And Scotty’s another part ofthe puzzle. The sad part, when I getthe report on what’s happening withhim, is that a lot of people wouldnever get the chance to hear him.Because when all this history godown, he’ll be a part of it.” v

Obituaries

A High-HorsepowerSpiritual QuestA friend remembers theonly Medill grad he knewwho could go zero to 100 in under three seconds.

By Mick Dumke

P aul Dana was always morethan my dear friend—he was areal-life literary figure. When

you spent time with him, it didn’tmatter what you were actuallydoing—being typical college kids bik-ing drunk around Evanston in searchof pizza, driving to Milwaukee to gobowling, sitting on the couch debat-ing environmental policy—becausePaul had a way of observing peopleand telling stories, sometimes as theywere happening, that made routineevents feel like chapters in a novel.And he, more than anyone, knewthey would keep coming. At the endof each adventure, instead of simply

saying good-bye, Paul had his ownway of telling you he’d see you again.“Down the road,” he’d say.

He was a very convincing person.As an experiment with auto racingevolved into his career, his friendscame to expect the incredible fromhim. I got used to describing him as“you know, Paul Dana—my friendwho has a journalism degree fromNorthwestern and races cars.” Evennow, days after the shocking experi-ence of learning from ESPN that hehad crashed and died, I’ve had toresist thinking of it as just the finalturn in the myth he built.

People keep asking me how heended up on the racetrack instead ofin a newsroom. I’d tell them Paulalways said he was a writer who didn’twrite. This was an exaggeration—he did write, and he wrote well. Hisarticles and stories and sketches werefull of vivid characters, colorfulquotes, and hilarious epiphanies, allof them true. Like the night we wentto a pub in Lincoln Park where twounderage guys could get some pitch-ers, and many hours later ended updissecting Catch-22 and the CowboyJunkies, arguing about God and evil,and finally agreeing that some goodforce exists in the world. It suddenlyseemed significant to Paul that we

[snip] Religion and morality don’t mix. The National CatholicReporter reports on a national Pew Research Center surveytaken in October. Asked when it’s OK to torture suspected terror-ists, 42 percent of Catholics said “rarely” or “never,” as did 47percent of white Protestants—and 57 percent of secularists. —HH

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Paul Dana the day before his fatal crash in Florida

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