Listen to Dalton Roberts’s podcast on the influence of Jimmy Rodgers’ blues. 07/24/09

Stump Martin asked me to write a column on "chicken-wire joints" where I have played. I have never played in such a place, but I have played in several where I would have welcomed a layer or two of chicken wire -- especially when I was starting out and playing the rougher places.

When I started playing in bars, it sure perked up my mother's prayer life. While I deeply regretted disappointing her, I absolutely had to play my music and there were no other places to play it. She didn't know I was playing for a couple of years due to the incredible level of sneakiness I had attained.

At 13 I learned to play guitar on a neighbor's old Stella. The strings on Stellas were set so high they built up the strength in your left hand until you could choke a hippopotamus.

By fifteen I had my own guitar and mandolin and was doing a 30-minute show on Saturday nights on WAGC ("Winning a Greater Chattanooga") with my cousin Monk Franklin. Then I decided I was ready for the wild and wonderful world of night clubbery.

City fireman Bob Davis liked my singing and had a gig on Glass Street that we affectionately called "The Rathole." That phrase would have better described the joint where Bobby played.

I went to work for him playing a flattop and hiding behind beer cases when policemen came in. Bobby was mainly interested in my repertoire of Hank Williams songs.

One night someone called for me at the door and it was a boy who once shot his friend in the head with a shotgun for stepping on his dog's tail (yes, the boy needed counseling). Bobby saw what was happening. He ran out and seized the boy by both wrists and discovered he had an open switchblade knife in his right hand. The boy mistakenly thought I was hitting on his girlfriend. I was at the age to begin such behavior but the truth was, I barely knew her. Bobby said she was just trying to make him jealous. Now, that place could have used some chicken wire.

The next place needing chicken wire was the Cascades on Suck Creek Mountain. I was playing there one night with Johnny "Six" Pack when I saw a girl dancing and holding an open knife in her hand. I had observed an argument between her and another woman so I called the owner and pointed her out.

She went around asking some of her macho friends to rough me up when the music was over and I was leaving. They lined up down the bar near closing time. A state trooper came in and I called him to the bandstand. I sacked up my guitar and left with him and he followed me down the mountain. I didn't stop at "go," collect $200, or even my pay for the night's work. My deepest desire was to see Cascades in my rearview mirror. Yes, that place could have used a couple of strands of chicken wire, liberally laced with barbed wire.

At Brown and Emma's, an upstairs joint on Market Street, when you went in the door the owner was sitting there with a sawed-off shotgun on his lap. His bouncer sat next to him thumping his palm with a blackjack. One night he opened up a long gash in the top of the head of one of my band members. One of Mama's prayers was answered that night because I quit that job. What good would chicken wire have been against a sawed-off shotgun?

Agnostic will grin to hear it, but I do not think I would be alive today if it hadn't been for my mother's prayers. All I can say in my defense is it was something I had to do. It was in my blood.

E-mail Dalton Roberts at DownhomeP@aol.com