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John Wirt's write-up of Teddy's for the Baton Rouge Advocate (June 2008). Call it the Advocate's anniversary gift to Teddy.
 Is Teddy’s Juke Joint the South’s last juke joint? Well, it’s not the absolute last genuine juke joint in America, but it’s definitely among the last genuine juke joints within easy reach of Baton Rouge. Naturally, blues is the house specialty at Teddy’s Juke Joint, a south Louisiana institution located in a converted wood-frame house in rural Zachary, “Ninety percent of the bands I book is blues,” owner Lloyd “Teddy” Johnson said recently. “Because I love the blues. That’s what I was raised on and mostly really what I know about.” Although Johnson opened Teddy’s Juke Joint with his record-spinning self as house entertainment, he’s been booking blues artists for most of the 30 years the club’s been open. And blues is definitely on the menu during the venue’s 30th anniversary week, running Sunday, June 29, through July 6. Performers include Baton Rouge blues legend James Johnson, blues legend in the making Lil’ Ray Neal and rising blues act Josh Garrett. Johnson opened his juke joint in 1979. Although he’d been an in-demand disc jockey since 1970 — known as the Painter Man because he hung his brush and roller up at gigs to advertise his painting business — Johnson thought being his own deejay in his own club was a way for him to make all the money. “I’d be my own deejay and get the profit off the liquor, too,” he said. “But I didn’t understand the way it worked.” A year or two after Teddy’s opened, Big Bo Melvin and the Nighthawks, a band looking for a place to practice, talked Johnson into letting them be his house band. Other musicians began appearing at Teddy’s, too, including Little Jimmy Reed, the one-man band, and such Baton Rouge legacy artists as Raful Neal and Whisperin’ Smith. “Silas Hogan, those type of cats would play at suppers, like an outdoor party where people sold chicken and fish,” Johnson recalled. “They’d play at these things and I met them. And then a lot of them, before they died, started playing here.” The house where Johnson was born in 1946 served as the original Teddy’s Juke Joint structure. He’s added several rooms since he acquired the building from his mother, who’d inherited it from her mother. Johnson and his juke joint have had their challenges through the decades, everything from the venue’s relatively obscure location to zoning issues to changing liquor laws and demographics. “By being out here in the country, it was like a no-no,” he said. “It’s been a fight from the day I decided to open up the place. It’s still a fight. Because what they’re trying to do, all the little places like this, they’re trying to shut them down. “It’s just kind of unheard of, especially a black business man, staying in one spot in the state of Louisiana this many years, and the building belongs to him.” Patrons enjoy the juke joint’s unique look and atmosphere. The decoration includes mirror fragments, Christmas lights, a 36-inch mirror ball and a 12-inch mirror ball. A 12-foot-long piece of driftwood decorated with musical instruments hangs above the bar. A baby carriage, tricycle and a little red wagon (like the wagon Johnson had when he was a kid) hang from the ceiling. “I decorated according to what I could afford to do,” Johnson explained. “Just stuff I refuse to throw away, or somebody threw away and I got hold to it. My building, basically, is built out of other people’s junk. I have booths in here that’s older than me. I have a black-and-white TV that I bought for my wife 30 years ago. It still works.” Such widely traveling blues musicians as the New Orleans-based Bryan Lee and Baton Rouge’s Larry Garner play on Teddy’s stage. Garner even mentions Teddy’s Juke Joint in his song, “Raised in the Country,” a track on his latest European CD, Here Today Gone Tomorrow. “It’s the last juke joint on Highway 61, man,” Garner said. “It reminds me of the old Tabby’s Blues Box, except it’s bigger and it’s got a more country atmosphere to it. It’s definitely a country juke joint. Not j-u-k-e, but j-o-o-k — jook joint.” “I love Teddy’s,” Lee said. “Teddy and his wife are just wonderful people. They feed us after the gig, they take real good care of the musicians. “And Teddy, he’s great, great comedy, with playing his records and talking and having fun with the people on the breaks. “Anybody who loves the blues needs to go to Teddy’s. It’s a piece of history, man. And when Teddy goes, that’s it. There’ll be no more Teddy’s Juke Joints.” This article was done in conjuction with Baton Rouge Blues Week and was the first write-up on Teddy's by any Zachary publication (in almost 30 years). Zachary Juke Joint Offers Blues, Soul and Character By Summer Suleiman (For Zachary Neighbors - May/June 2008 edition) Teddy At first sight, it appears to be a scene out of a 1920s flapper movie. Colorful disco lights hang from the ceiling, and license plates from all over the country line the walls. There’s so much character in this place, it’s hard to know exactly where to begin our story. Teddy Johnson, owner of Teddy’s Juke Joint, walks out of a tiny back room with a big, beige cowboy hat and a wide smile across his face. He is as friendly as the place boasts and when I extend my arm to greet him, he opts for a hug, saying he “doesn’t shake pretty women’s hands.”  Teddy Johnson, owner of Teddy's Juke Joint (left) and friend [actually Clarence "Pieman" Williams - Teddy](right). It’s only about five o’clock in the evening and people haven’t arrived for the Sunday night blues jam session. We sit down at a small table in the corner and Teddy points out that it is the exact place where he was born. The joint was originally the house he grew up in and 31 years ago, he decided to turn his love for blues into a place that people in Zachary could enjoy. “I do it because I love it. I’ve been playing music since I was five years old,” Johnson said. As a child, Johnson listened to his grandfather play blues. He says blues is a feeling deep inside of him, that won’t go away. “I’m sixty two years old, and I plan on running this place until I die,” he said. Characters Just when I thought it couldn’t get anymore interesting, I met Johnson’s wife Nancy Truchan. She cooks up meals seven days a week and helps run the joint. Truchan grew up in New York near Syracuse and moved to Baton Rouge in the ‘70s with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) as a public health nurse in Scotlandville. She met Teddy through a co-worker and says she soon fell for the blues too. “I love the blues. I love all kinds of music and I love what we do here. I wouldn’t change it a bit. It means something to us,” Truchan said. But Truchan admits she was skeptical when Teddy first shared the idea of turning his childhood home into a juke joint. “When I first saw the building, I told him to burn it down. But then it started shaping up. It’s something Teddy always wanted, and I’ve always stood by him,” Truchan said. The Blues  By this time the band has arrived and begins setting up on the small, make-shift stage at the rear of the joint. James Johnson, the lead guitarist, extends a warm and familiar greeting to Truchan. She knows the customers in the blues bar by name. It seems more like a gathering of old friends than a place of business. The welcoming vibe easily lends itself to strangers like myself. Truchan said that’s what’s special about the juke joint. “I like to see people having a good time. They come in and they’re relaxed,” Truchan said. At the heart of the juke joint is the band. Lester Delmore is the lead drummer setting up tonight. He plays every Sunday night with the house band. He sits back as cool as ever on a tiny bench outside when I pass him. He’s one of those people you can look in the eyes and know they are full of interesting stories to tell. When I sit down next to him, he pours his story out to me, as genuine and soulful as any blues song. Like many musicians, Delmore comes from a musical background. His father, uncle and brother played the drums and his mom and sister played the guitar. Delmore said he took a shot at other things like sports in high school, but nothing was quite like playing music. “It’s a gratifying feeling, especially when you’re playing with good guys. You just ride the music. It’s like dancing - you get a feel for the music and just roll with it,” he said. Delmore began playing with experienced musicians after high school and traveled all over the state. His favorite place to play is Europe in venues like the 100 Club in London. After playing and traveling for years, Delmore returned close to home, but the blues kept calling him. “I came back to Baton Rouge and tried to settle down, but I just kept going back to the music,” Delmore said. He’s been playing drums for over 30 years now. History It’s hard to imagine so much history in one tiny place. Sometimes the small things that are most meaningful are overlooked. But just off a main road in Zachary, behind gravel and greenery, there’s a story waiting to be told. If you’re interested in visiting Zachary’s first, best and only true juke joint, you can find Teddy’s place is at 17001 Old Scenic Hwy, at the corner of Old Scenic and Heck Young Road  Not often do Juke Joints (or blues clubs in general) get to be the subject of a book. Neither do Baton Rouge blues bands. But both are covered in this newly published book by Cristina Fletes. Cristina is a student at Louisiana State University studying Photography. Juke Joint Blues was the culmination of one of her advanced Photography class projects. You can see more about the book, and purchase a copy, at www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/127451 How did you end up at Teddy’s Juke Joint? "Think about all of the stereotypes about the U.S. that you have piously learned. Now reverse them: you’re at Teddy’s on a Sunday night—nothing better could be happening to you." Le Monde, March 22, 2007. “How did you end up here?” Here—north of Zachary, Louisiana; in the middle of nowhere, at Teddy’s, one March night. First of all, the lead singer, a blues guitarist named Sundance, 56 years old, sporting a hat and a silvery-flamed black shirt. Next, the bassist: King Salomon, followed by the drummer, “Pic” Delmore. And finally, in a fanciful feathered cap and old-school leather jacket: Hoodoo Jimmy: “But seriously, how the hell did you end up in this place?” This place. Teddy’s Juke Joint. Take note: on the highway through Baton Rouge, look left and right into the night—and not just because the alligators are waiting for you, with fixin’s ready, to veer off the road. No: here, car insurance rates are higher than in other states. People drive fast and don’t always stay in the right lane. Just after Zachary, don’t miss Old Scenic Road. Then take the parish byway, and finally, at the fourth alligator on the left, veer onto a dirt road. Now it’s all up to you to figure out. Then, at the end of this road, which you wouldn’t even imagine in the craziest of films, Teddy’s Juke Joint majestically appears: sublime, surprising, lit up like a million Christmas trees, luxurious like a 5-star restaurant with fifty-dollar appetizers, a cozy wood shed, a place where people meet, you easily feel the humanity, a certain joie de vivre, the Blues, Faulkner, Robert Johnson, people with little means—but much class. In the tiny kitchen, Nancy stirs up some “Soul Food,” traditional Southern cuisine with a spicy base that could even attack an alligator’s digestive tract. Inside—warmth, friendliness, smiles, music, lanterns, Blues, the bar, gals, giant guys, beers, neon lights, country types, customers, musicians, red beans—anything but bad taste. With a white felt hat and a matching vest, a bit of augmented corpulence since he opened the business in 1976, a neck full of chains, cropped shirt, seductive moustache, rings on each finger, more elegance than a prince of the highest order, excellent at poker; Teddy is king of his domain. And even so, it is he that gives you a proper king’s reception. At each set break, Teddy glides to the front of the room and occupies an altar that would make even the Vatican blush. He is the DJ in this vibrantly painted booth. Think about all of the stereotypes about the U.S. that you have piously learned. Now reverse them: you’re at Teddy’s on a Sunday night—nothing better could be happening to you. The Blues? Oh yeah: here, it’s the Blues—the real-deal, the authentic, the joyful, and all night. There’s Cathy, the delta’s own Janis Joplin; Phil Guy, Buddy’s brother—who, when he lights up his band, reminds you that Buddy’s gone. The century’s biggest creation. And here, nobody asks questions about skin color—even though people talk about it everywhere else in this land. In fact, if you want to go to Teddy’s, it’s probably best to give Bernard Cerquiglini, Baton Rouge savant, a call. Cerquiglini’s contact is taxi driver and sometimes (all the time) Blues poet, Ronnie Smith. Yep: everyone in this wonderful place spends his days in a taxi, or at the factory. The Blues, that’s for the nights. Between two taxi rides, Smith, spokesman of African-American consciousness, organizes the Rockoctober Festival and keeps himself active at the Buddy Stewart Foundation, a tiny museum just down the street from the Museum of African American History. How do you find all this? Similar to La Paquita’s kitchen in Mexico or Kyoto’s Lush Life. Certainly not by looking: but by keeping your heart open, by meeting people, by putting just a smidgeon of confidence back into this fucking world the way it is, by betting it all on that dark, unknown element—life. That’s all. Here's another article...from a little more local source back in August of 2007. Written by Chris Frink for 225 Magazine.  Your first trip to Teddy’s Juke Joint may leave you questioning the directions. Relax. Have faith. Teddy’s is worth the drive—especially for the Sunday night blues jam. Teddy’s is out in the country, up in the northern end of the parish. Too far for Baker. Too close for Zachary. It’s a good, old-fashioned country bar. In another region, you might call Teddy’s a roadhouse. Here, a ramshackle bar that serves up good food, strong drink and the blues is a juke joint. You gotta look carefully. The sign is small and the joint sits in the woods a couple hundred yards down a gravel driveway. It’s the first sign of civilization since you drove by the prison. The front porch is lit up fluorescent bright. Inside, it’s a different story. The house lights are off, but countless strings of Christmas lights and rope lights crisscross the ceiling, over and around two disco balls. Floods illuminate the stage at the front of the joint and Teddy’s DJ booth at the back. There are lights behind the bar and on electric knick-knacks on the bar. “It’s a drive, but it’s worth it,” says Larry Garner, one of Baton Rouge’s most accomplished blues musicians. When he’s not playing on tour on Europe, Garner often jams at Teddy’s. “It’s a real juke joint, or jook joint,” he said, pronouncing jook like book. “Teddy’s is one of the last juke joints.” It’s authentic. Not manufactured like a House of This or Planet That or Something Rock Café. Teddy’s is real and that’s what keeps Baton Rouge bluesmen making that drive to play. Lloyd “Teddy” Johnson Jr. opened his place 29 years ago in the house where he grew up. His bed once sat where men now pee. Back then, Teddy was tiring of nights on the road he spent pursuing the DJ career he began in 1970. “I figured if I opened my own place I would make ALL the money,” he says. “I found out that wasn’t true.” After looking into renting, his grandmother offered “that little house out back,” Teddy said. “It was just an old house, nobody living in it.” The house had no bathroom and only a single electric line. His wife Nancy offered her advice: torch the place. Teddy declined, and years of work followed. “We’re still building the driveway,” he said. “I wore out a chainsaw just cutting the trees.” They built several additions to expand the house into a real juke joint, including a kitchen. The stage takes up half of what was the original front porch. These are basic, down-to-earth renovations. The floor is bare plywood. The air conditioning pours out of a variety of window units. “Everything in here is second-hand,” Teddy says. “Or third-hand,” Nancy adds. For instance, most of the small tabletops came from home construction sites where Teddy salvaged wood scraps from holes cut for sinks into countertops, bolting them to table legs. “Some things, I picked up off the side of the road,” he said. The décor in Teddy’s has a homey, haphazard feel. Banners and promotional posters for a spectrum of beer and liquor brands cover the walls. Old CDs strung together flutter in the A/C breeze, along with bright plastic spirals that spin. “Beware pick pockets and loose women” signs and the ubiquitous out-of-state license plates are tacked to the walls. The bar’s namesake is a continuing theme. Two bright chrome Teddy Bear hubcaps flank on the wall behind the stage. A painted sign featuring a smiling teddy bear decorates the DJ booth. With his big smile, rings on every beefy finger, bright suits and hats (cowboy or top) and the occasional cape, Teddy is as welcoming and authentic as his place. “I’ve been wearing capes since I was 6 years old.” That style has helped keep his Teddy’s Juke Joint open this long, as has his fairly recent dedication to live music. Teddy has hosted a steady bill of live acts from the road and from the Baton Rouge area since he started his Sunday night jams more than two years ago. Veteran keyboard player “Hoodoo” Jimmy Simpson and guitar player Weldon “Sundanze” Dunston came to Teddy after Swamp Mama’s closed. The now-defunct downtown bar had hosted a Sunday night jam, and Hoodoo Jimmy and Sundanze talked Teddy into taking up the slack. “Teddy had had a history of being a disco and doing live music,” Simpson says. Teddy’s has something crucial to a Sunday jam: a kitchen. Local liquor laws allow restaurants to sell alcohol on Sunday, but not bars. Restaurants have kitchens, bars don’t. The jam draws amateurs of various skills and seasoned pros like Garner and some of Baton Rouge’s accomplished bluesmen, like Lil’ Ray Neal and Oscar “Harpo” Davis. James Johnson, the “chicken scratch” guitarist on Slim Harpo’s 1966 hit, “Baby, Scratch My Back,” alternates with Sundanze running the jam with Simpson. You never know who might show up. One Sunday, Neal and Garner came out, along with four amateur sax players. A couple of Sundays later, a surfeit of guitar and bass players. A professional band leader like Garner can relax at a jam and have fun. “Nobody expects the O’Jays on Sunday night.” In an area with a strong—but waning—blues tradition, the Sunday jam “helps keep the blues alive,” Garner says. “Younger musicians don’t know anything about the old style like John Lee Hooker or R.L. Burnside. I think they learn a lot at these sessions.” In addition to blues fans making the drive from Baton Rouge, Teddy says he’s drawing culture vacationers, people from across the nation and from around the world who seek out the joint. Teddy pointed to a customer who just sat down. “He’s a professor from France.” Sure enough, Bernard Cerquiglini is a professor at LSU—the director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies. And he’s a Teddy’s regular. Cerquiglini makes the trip for the music, the friendship, the authenticity—and the food. “This is the best place in Baton Rouge,” he says, just before he tucks into a plate of red beans and rice—beans like you can’t find outside South Louisiana; beans with a deep, smoky-spicy flavor that leave a glow, but no burn; juke-joint beans. Earlier this year Cerquiglini brought a reporter friend from Le Monde, France’s top newspaper, to Teddy’s. In March, a piece about Teddy’s appeared in Le Monde’s culture column. The trip to Teddy’s from Paris may be a lot longer, but it’s well worth the effort. Krickett Dawson's article on Teddy's Juke Joint published in Big City Blues Magazine back in the fall of 2006 Walking into Teddy’s Juke Joint for the first time, I stopped in my tracks. I had never been to a juke joint, so I had nothing to compare it with. My eyes scanned the interior, taking in all the memorabilia; signs, posters, old license plates, strung lights and Teddy’s throne where he DJ’s and spins tunes during breaks. He’s a natural entertainer himself . The wall behind the bandstand is colorful and is a great background for taking pictures of the performers. I walked around and took it all in. I was charmed by the magic. Teddy had invited me to come out and knew I’d want to hang out if I ever got there. I took my time getting there because I live 30 miles away. When I finally got there, I was greeted by Teddy and Nancy; all smiles and full of life. The place gives you a warm feeling and entices you to stay. The musicians are hand picked by Teddy and his wife, Nancy. They have the roots of the blues in their souls and you know the music will always be wonderful. Musicians love to perform at Teddy’s. I’ve personally seen and heard Kenny Neal, “Lil” Ray Neal, The Neal Brothers, Oscar ”Harpo” Davis, Kenny Acosta, Little Jimmy Reed, Bryan Lee and a host of other local and traveling groups. Local musicians show up for the Sunday Jam and give you their best. Teddy lets them know they are appreciated and they can tell they are important to him and his guests. If ever there were people trying to keep the blues alive, it’s Teddy and Nancy.. Teddy was born in the old shotgun house which is now the Juke Joint. He and Nancy decided to turn it into a blues joint in 1979. They sure did a top notch job of it. They love their place and are proud to share it with you. Both of them are friendly, warm and charming. They make you feel welcome and see to it that your needs are taken care of, whatever they may be, if possible. Nancy runs the kitchen, commonly known as “Nancy’s Kitchen” and she’s got it going on. The food is some of the best I’ve ever had and the service is exceptional. She is sort of laid back and easy going and has a certain charm that makes you feel like an old friend. All in all, I would and do steer people to Teddy’s Juke Joint. It is an experience you won’t regret or forget. The next time you are in the area, even as far as New Orleans, it is worth your while to get to Teddy’s. Check his web site for schedule of events and view the photo’s. ( teddysjukejoint.com). Don’t forget to get out and enjoy live music, especially blues. I hope to see ya at Teddy’s. |
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