"I have some bad news," my wife said as she climbed into the passenger seat. It's not what you want to hear when picking your wife up from work, especially in a week in which death has seemed to shadow us and our loved ones at every corner. News of the passing of Ted "Papa Soul" Lee, an institution in the Eugene music and culinary scenes, has left me saddened.
I interviewed Papa for a grad school writing project, hanging around his restaurant a few times over the course of a week in 2007, notebook in hand. Papa was wary of me at first. His star was on the rise, and he'd been interviewed a number of times by various news outlets. My brand of narrative writing, though, calls for some good old-fashioned depth reporting, and Papa couldn't quite seem to put his finger on why I'd want to bum around in his joint multiple nights in a row, and scribble down what his regulars were saying to one another. He was always hospitable, however, even when I'd only buy a single beer and nurse it over an hour. Papa loosened up after I'd questioned him a bit, once he realized I was an ex-pat Southerner who, like Papa himself, was trying to make sense of his own lineage and cultural inheritance.
And when the article appeared in Eugene Magazine, in much-truncated form, Papa framed it and hung it on his restaurant's wall. In a way, having the man memorialize my writing that way was significant for me, perhaps even more so than it was for him: having a respected businessman value my work enough to have it framed was a big mental boost for a young writer, and gave me the confidence to approach other interview subjects fearlessly. I guess I have always thought of the man as a sort of spiritual benefactor, even if he never knew it. In fact, that grinning photo of me you see above and to the right was taken on the sidewalk in front of his place.
And what's more, Papa never forgot me, and hailed me warmly each time he saw me. (A perk of being a reviewer, to be sure.) He was a man with an enormous appetite for life, for both its nurturing and destructive sides... including some rougher elements (drug use, response to racism, a deadbeat father) that were understandably scrubbed by my editor for publication in a lifestyle magazine. And while I understand why the piece had to be gutted, I've always felt something was lost in translation. This seems an appropriate occasion to recognize the life and the works of Ted Lee, to mark what the man stood for.
So I hope my readers will indulge me in this, perhaps the longest blog entry I've posted, the unexpurgated, original version of "Deep-Fried Soul."
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It’s past the dinner hour, and most of the restaurant’s
dining customers are on their way out the door, bellies and doggie bags full.
In less than an hour the regular Thursday night reggae jam will usher in a new
clientele, and in one corner of the tiny Victorian bungalow’s front room, a
couple of DJs are already pulling tables into a makeshift desk for their sound
equipment. The sound system is cranking out the cream of Motown and soul, all
African-American artists. From the kitchen, a cook’s voice wavers as he sings
along with “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas. A young waitress joins in
under her breath and she putters about behind the front counter.
Peering down at the waitress from the upper echelons of the
liquor rack that crowns the front counter, a rubber ducky with James Brown’s
distinctive locks mugs next to a peeved-looking Snoop Dogg action figure.
They’re mirrored on the opposite side by a grinning Louis Armstrong figurine.
The walls of the cottage are plastered with retro-styled posters and “outsider
art” featuring black musicians, Robert Johnson and Lightnin’ Hopkins and Jimmy
Hendrix and Stevie Wonder. An oil painting features a large, heavily-tattooed
man wailing away on a harmonica.
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