sound and image. Charles came up with “Murder, Incorporated.” I said, “Hey, it sounds too much like an infamous criminal organiza- tion.” [ laughs ] At the time, there were a lot of Black people being killed in the Detroit area by the police, and, in the South, there was the KKK killing people. So [while] all this was flashing through my mind, I was thinking of a name that would actually be like a shocking re- minder to the public of what was going on. So “Black Merda” came to my mind. But it’s like double entendre—this dynamic music and songs that just kill people. When did Black Merda technically start? Black Merda probably started around 1969 or 1968. The Tempta- tions were doing a tour [with Edwin Starr], and Edwin wanted us to back him up, so we did. At that point, I think we were dressing like Black Merda [psychedelic style], but we didn’t call ourselves Black Merda. This was when Charles came in. We dropped the horn play- ers and wanted to just be this rock, funk-type band. We wanted to be like Jimi Hendrix, or the Who or Cream and all these guys. So when we went on this tour with Edwin Starr, he wanted to have a regular band with horns. The Temptations had a whole orchestra onstage. We said, “No, we’re not doing it,” but he wanted us to play so badly he went with a four-piece guitar band. How did the crowd respond? Well, we played Madison Square Garden. Edwin would open up the show. We would come out first to get on the bandstand. When we came out, all the young girls were screaming and hollering! Because we were psychedelic’d out! [ laughs ] We had big Afros and the fancy clothes—they were just going nuts when we came out. So Edwin was more on the cutting edge with the young guys, ’cause the whole psychedelic movement was in full force, and young people were do- ing that thing. The Temptations were trying to do it, but they had this big orchestra and were kind of passé to a certain degree. [But through the Temptations is] how we met Fugi—through Eddie Kendricks. On the tour, we got to meet Eddie. We used to live in the same neighborhood as Eddie, and we used to go to his house and play in his basement. So he said, “I know this guy named Fugi. He’s kind of like you guys. A little bit. I’m’a set up a meeting at Hitsville USA.” One night, we went up there, and we’re walking up the walkway. And, as we’re walking up, somebody pulls up in their car, jumps out, lookin’ all crazy, and [says in an exaggerated voice]: “I knew it was you guys! I knew it!” Fugi. “It couldn’t be anyone but you guys!” [ laughs ] Who was your audience? Mainly Black audiences. We were this known R&B backup band before we did this funk-psychedelic thing. We played the so-called chitlin circuit. We played the Apollo, all these uptown theaters in Philadelphia, the Regal Theater in Chicago. Around the Detroit area, there were certain Black clubs [we would play at]. When we changed our approach and our look, we were still playing those clubs. Before we put those albums out, we used to rearrange popular songs. Like, we’d do a funk, rocked-out version of “It’s Your Thing.” We would play part of it, their version, then, in the middle, we would go into this real hard, Black Merdarized version! [ laughs ] People would go nuts. We did a few White-type gigs, like Grande Ballroom in the Detroit area. But it was mostly Black audiences.
How did Black Merda come together? The whole thing started with “Wolf.” We met when we were about fourteen. That was, like, 1960, when we were in Detroit. [Wolf] knew a song called “Honky Tonk” by Bill Doggett. All he knew was [the introductory guitar refrain]. [ laughs ] My father was a blues musician, so he showed me about five blues songs. We used to listen to Freddie King all the time: “Sen-Sa-Shun,” “The Stumble,” and “Hide Away.” We used to play those songs all the time. Word started getting around that [we] could play pretty well, so people started using us on demo sessions. [We] ended up at a place called Golden World Studios that was run by Ed Wingate. And they had a couple producers there: Bob and Chico Hamilton. This was, like, 1963 or 1964. We were seventeen or eighteen. While we were doing these sessions, Edwin Starr, who we had never heard of, was working on a song called “Agent Double-O-Soul.” And so I played bass—I think they had two bass players: Bob Babbitt was one of the bass players, and I was the other. Anyway, Bob and Chico Hamilton used me and Wolf and Tyrone Hite, who was our drummer at the time. We worked on “Agent Double-O-Soul” and a couple other songs. When Edwin wanted to go on the road, he needed a band. So [he took us], since we had done the sessions, and, of course, we were cheap. [ laughs ] But the main thing was that we could play the music. So he wanted us to go on the road with him. We [also] got these horn players—a trumpet player and a tenor saxophone player. The trumpet player’s name was Victor Stubblefield and the saxo- phone player’s name was Gus Hawkins—no relation to the Hawk- ins brothers. So we had this five-piece band. And Edwin had this gimmick thing: he had “Agent Double-O-Soul” out, and it was a hit, so [we were] Edwin Starr and the Soul Agents. So we did gigs with him and did some gigs with Gene Chandler after Edwin. We did a tour of the West Coast with [Chandler] as Gene’s band, and we also backed the Chi-Lites. What was Jimi Hendrix’s impact on your group? I was in the Army up in Fort Lewis, Washington, in 1966 [when I first heard of him]. I actually saw a picture in a Seattle newspaper. It was a picture of Hendrix, and he was on his knees, but his back was on the stage, and he had on all these wild clothes. Especially seeing a Black person like that was a shock! I was like, “These Black people: sometimes they’ll do anything to get attention!” [ laughs ] So I got out of the Army and was back [with the Soul Agents], and we were doing these R&B gigs up the West Coast—I think we were touring with Gene Chandler. So we stopped in record stores along the way, and I happened to see a lone copy of Are You Ex- perienced? I recognized the name. I think Tyrone said, “Let’s buy it to laugh at it.” So we got it, and we didn’t listen to it until we got back to Detroit. Once we put it on, we listened to that album [for] months on end. It was the intensity of his playing, his auda- ciousness onstage, his out-there lyric writing—he was just so free! [ laughs ] He was just so much freer than I was, and it was how I wanted to be! What is the origin of the name Black Merda? We came up with this concept of the funk-rock thing when we were still the Soul Agents. [W]hen we got Charles [Hawkins] in, we de- cided that we needed a new name to go with our more dynamic
(left to right) Black Merda’s Charles “Charlie Hawk” Hawkins, VC L. “The Mighty V!” Veasey, Anthony “Wolf” Hawkins, and Tyrone “Snake” Hite, circa 1968. Photo courtesy of VC L. Veasey.
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