Esquerita — “A Back Seat to No One”

Sometime in the early 1950’s, an obscure singer named Richard Penniman spent the night in a Greyhound Bus Terminal in Macon, Georgia. He was trying to meet someone to have sex with. Among the characters he encountered was “Sister Rosa” who hawked “blessed bread” that was really only “regular old bread that you could buy at the store.” She was accompanied by a musician with enormous hands who ended up back at Penniman’s place and taught him to play piano. Penniman went on to release recordings under the name Little Richard that had such an impact that he has been dubbed “The Architect of Rock and Roll.” In contrast, the fellow he met that night — who later called himself Esquerita — was never commercially successful. But he enjoyed cult status among a small body of devoted fans.

Esquerita was born Eskew Reeder, Jr., in the mid to late 1930’s (the evidence as to the date is conflicting) and raised in Greenville, South Carolina in an atmosphere permeated by the Baptist Church and its music. He attended Sterling High where, many years earlier, the renown gospel group the Dixie Hummingbirds had originally been founded as “the Sterling High School Quartet.” At some point, Esquerita made the leap from gospel to rock and began wearing a six inch high conk hairdo, along with flashy clothes, rhinestone-studded glasses, jewelry and make up.

It is difficult to disentangle where Esquerita’s influence on Little Richard ends and Little Richard’s influence on Esquerita begins. But in his 2011 biography of Little Richard, David Kirby wrote that as a “gay, black, flamboyant, gospel-trained and immensely talented singer, songwriter, and pianist,” Esquerita was “the template” from which Little Richard “drew his own image.”

After Little Richard left the music business to become an evangelist minister, Capitol Records tried marketing Esquerita in the hope of filling the void. A 1959 album was released with linear notes stating: “For the most stomping, all out rock ‘n roll, Esquerita takes a back seat to no one. In fact, he takes no seat at all — he stands crouched and weaving over his piano…. His sensational music, just like everything else about him, is truly the farthest out that man has gone.“

Capitol also released a series of singles, including this one, which includes the lyrics:

I’ve been walking all over town, running from door to door.
Everyone I asked about a job, they give me the answer no.

Another performer may have sung these lines in a morose or understated manner. But when Esquarita, reaches the word “no” — he nearly shouts it. It feels like a gratuitous slap in the face, but it’s also funny — as if the very indignity of life  

 

at the bottom has been transformed, by slight of hand, into something warm and powerful.

Unfortunately, record sales were disappointing. In the years that followed, Esquerita drifted — reportedly spending time in prison in Puerto Rico, where he lost an eye in a fight, and in Riker’s Island, where he was placed in segregation with drag queens for his safety. In the 1980’s, he was rediscovered by some of his fans while appearing in a small Manhattan nightspot. He was still ebullient, but also drug-addicted and volatile. He died of AIDS in 1986 and was buried at Hart’s Island, the enormous potter’s field that serves the indigent of New York.

Some might view Esquerita’s life and career as a failure. But along with Little Richard, he changed the course of popular music — and somehow managed to do so as a brash, homosexual, African-American in the segregated South. The farthest out that man has gone? No. But it was an extraordinary achievement.

The best source on Esquerita I have found is an article by Peter Monnery and Jay Halsey in the June 2012 issue of the British publication “Blues and Rhythm.” A 2009 post by James Marshall on the houndblog.blogspot and an article by Miriam Linna in the August, 1990 issue of Spin Magazine are also valuable. Let’s conclude with another of his songs: