A brilliant photographer discovers an iconic blues musician and helps to tell his amazing story.

Buzz Knight:

I am Buzz Knight, the host of the Takin’ A Walk podcast. I’d appreciate if you follow us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, so you can keep up to date with episodes at takinawalk.com. And if you have any suggestions about potential guests for Takin’ A Walk, whether it be you or someone else, you can also leave it at takinawalk.com. We love exploring music history on foot. And today our guest, albeit virtually, is Bob Merco, a filmmaker, photographer specializing in documentary films. And he’s the creator of a wonderful documentary, Junk, Blues and Collard Greens, the lovely story of the life and times of the late Blues Man, Willie Houston. Welcome, Bob Merco, to Takin’ A Walk. Well, Bob, congrats on your documentary. Can you tell us how you first met the Blues Man, Willie Houston?

Bob Merco:

Oh, I guess 17 years ago, give or take, I read an article in a local weekly newspaper called Westward. I forgot the guy’s name, but it was entitled The Junkman Cometh. Willie Houston was the scrap/junk dealer at a little scrapyard behind his house. Anyway, the article told all about him, but never really gave where he lived except for a neighborhood. I was not a filmmaker. Well, I don’t know if I still am, but been a still photographer since I was 16. And I had dabbled in Super 8mm, 8mm, that kind of thing. Well, anyway, I said, “You know, why not?” I had a super VHS camera.

So I headed out and took about a week, went to a few places, asked about him. Nobody knew what I was talking about, but finally went to a scrapyard. And why I didn’t go there in the beginning, I don’t know. But, “Oh yeah, the junkman, Willie Houston,” and they narrowed it down to a couple blocks and I went there. Well, I got through the junkyard dog he had and knocked on the door, introduced myself, and he was nice as can be. And I said, “I want to do a documentary. I’m not Hollywood. It could either win an Oscar or go on down, flush it down the toilet.” So he said, “Yeah, why not? Come on in.” At the time, he was cooking collard greens, and I knew right off the bat what they were because I… Born in New York, but wound up in Miami, Florida. And so I knew exactly what they were, and that’s how the title got started. Junk, Blues and Collard Greens. And we hit it right off, and that started it.

Buzz Knight:

It’s beautiful. So you were immediately encouraged to document his story, right? As soon as you met him, you asked for the order immediately, Bob, didn’t you?

Bob Merco:

Yeah. And like I said, I had made a few little music videos before, and so I figured that the Super VHS wasn’t going to cut it, and I went out and bought a state of the art at the time, couple thousand dollars’ Mini digital DV, which is probably worth about $200 now if I could sell it, but you know how that goes. And we started filming within a week, but before I even started filming I said, “I need to take some pictures of him.” And I was on my way somewhere one day and I passed a little Mexican restaurant.

And if you notice the Cadillac on the cover of the DVD, I think it’s maybe a ’60 something Cadillac, big… I mean, a boat. It just about fit through his gate. But I passed a Mexican restaurant, and that was sitting in the parking lot. So I went in, there was two people eating. “Does anybody own that Cadillac out front?” And immediately, this guy, “You didn’t hit it, did you?” And I said, “No, no, I just want to talk to you.” And told him what I was doing. He said, “Well, where do I show up?” And so the next day he showed up with the Cadillac. He shined it and polished it, and he was so proud of that. And that’s how we got the cover picture.

Buzz Knight:

So you knew immediately that you had something. You bonded with him. You saw the story from reading it, obviously, in the paper. And then when you connected with Mr. Houston, you were like, “I’ve got something here.” Right?

Bob Merco:

Yeah. I knew what it was and figured it was more or less the local type level from the story. He had came to Denver during the ’50s. ’59, I think, somewhere around there. And he had been in the Korean War, and he wound up in what we call Five Points, a neighborhood. And there was jazz clubs, and he started out and he played… Oh, just different gigs and stuff for not much money, and always relying on the scrap business to supplement his income between jobs. And I guess that went on for a lot of years. And then right off the beginning when we started filming, he didn’t have a band. He had a couple of guys that would come over his house and they would rehearse and jam.

And it wasn’t until Hubert Blues Lawhorn, who narrated the film, got with him and they started the Blues Prowlers. And that became his thing that he did for… Oh, several years. Because I followed him for almost two years at his house. And you see all that in the film. Went to his concerts and went to bars and that kind of thing, and put it all together on a little old Gateway computer. And people said, “Are you crazy? How can you make an hour, whatever, long documentary on that thing?” I thought, “That’s all I got.” So it was guerrilla filmmaking from the start.

Buzz Knight:

Did you ever reach a point where you weren’t sure if you could see it from start to finish at any point in time?

Bob Merco:

I had told him right off the bat that he didn’t have to pay me. He didn’t have to incur any expense. I would do everything, and if it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, well, we had a good time. No, I didn’t encounter any problems that I remember. I encountered some problems afterward, after I completed it, and found out that… I had model releases and all that stuff that I knew about and knew I had to cover his songs, the copyrights and all of that. And while I was making it, his lawyer called me and I almost wanted to stop it. And it wasn’t through him. Willie was just as natural and comfortable as can be, but I hate to say lawyers, but he addressed the situation and said, “You know, what if Steven Spielberg comes to town and wants to make a movie of him? With the rights and all this.” Then I said, “Come on, Steven Spielberg is not coming to town to film the junkman. Okay?” And so he went away and that was really all it was. I just kept going and going. And finally it came together.

Buzz Knight:

So Mr. Houston passed away. When did he die?

Bob Merco:

I think about little over two years ago he passed. And when I met him, he was 79 or 80 and sharp as tack, and just down home and where he came from, gran came Louisiana… Picked cotton. So he passed away I think two years ago.

Buzz Knight:

So he got to see the final product, right?

Bob Merco:

Oh yeah. I made him a deal back then and I gave him… And I didn’t make many of them. I made maybe 70 or 80 of them. And I made those on the Gateway, one at a time, and what a pain in the… And I really didn’t know if I should continue it because like I said, making them one at a time and once in a while somebody would say, “It plays on my laptop, but it doesn’t play on my TV. It stopped.” And so I didn’t really know the way around that, but didn’t run into too much trouble.

And so I said, “Well, here,” I gave him 15 or 20 of them, and then there was a lot of places after that… I couldn’t attend his gigs and stuff like that. They might have been out of town. And so he would take them and sell them and keep whatever he got. He had a DV… CD, excuse me, out at the same time. And so he would sell them. But otherwise I would take them to his concerts and bars and sold a few and gave him a couple bucks for each one. And he was just happy as a jaybird.

Buzz Knight:

It’s a sweet story. It’s so beautifully done. Junk, Blues and Collard Greens. Bob, how can somebody get ahold of it, other than you making these individual copies on your Gateway?

Bob Merco:

I did a little advertising on Facebook and got some response there. Before all that, I had them made professionally from a DVD duplication place. And so I know they would play and all of that. And I did all the printing and stuff like that. And then within a month, if not less, I’m going to take an ad out, and they’re working on it now in the Colorado Blue Society, which he was a member and the band was. And most of those guys, especially the older… Old timers, at that. But 17 years ago. They knew him, knew of him, played on some of his gigs. So that will be an opening there. But for the general public, I have it under supermerc81@comcast.net on PayPal, and that’s how you would order it.

Buzz Knight:

It’s beautifully done. Congratulations on a real amazing story.

Bob Merco:

Oh, if I did it again, I probably would’ve did 20 things different. You know the deal. I’m sure you were in broadcasting and stuff like that and you know how things like that goes. And well, I should have did this. I should have did that. But like I said, “It ain’t Hollywood, Willie, so…”

Buzz Knight:

Well, the great Willie Houston. It’s a great story, and thank you, Bob Merco, for being on Takin’ A Walk and telling this story, which is certainly music history, unsung hero music history. Thank you.

Bob Merco:

With local and with the B.B. King… But he enjoyed the crap out of it, and he just looked forward. You can see the way he would dress for the gigs. And he was the elder statesman of the blues in Colorado.

Buzz Knight:

Thank you, Bob.

Bob Merco:

Thank you, sir, for having me.

Speaker 3:

Takin’ A Walk with Buzz Night is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.