"Here's a breezy, light, and utterly charming tale of a musician's life with all the ups-and-downs and turns-and-twists that are a part of those of us in jazz. Jeannie Cheatham knows everybody, and she has much to say about her fellow musicians. Her descriptive style paints an unforgettable picture as she covers the last fifty years of being on the scene with her husband Jimmy and the Sweet Baby Blues Band."
Marian McPartland, jazz legend and host of the award-winning Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, National Public Radio's longest-running and most widely carried jazz program
"Being an admitted, although recovering, racist and sexist when it comes to playing blues and jazz, I have been further educated and much less prejudiced after reading Jeannie Cheatham's book Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On. Jeannie's book drives home the fact that we who embrace music as a profession share common joys and common miseries. Having played with Jeannie I will never again say "plays good for a woman." I can't say she's "one of the boys," but she is definitely one of the musicians. Thanks, Jeannie, for a wonderful book from another point of view.
Fred Wesley, James Brown's former music director and author of Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Sideman
"The truth is alive and well in Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On! I know, because I've been the legendary Bo Diddley's band leader and bass player for twenty years. Prior to that, I got to spend two incredible years playing with Jeannie Cheatham. She taught me where 'the pocket' is. This book is right in 'the pocket.'"
Debby Hastings, highly acclaimed bass player for Bo Diddley and many other artists
"Behind the mesmerizing sound of Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham's Sweet Baby Blues Band, there is the mesmerizing life of Jeannie Cheatham, which she chronicles in this captivating biography. Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On reads better than fiction. It has all the elements of a page-turnera hardscrabble upbringing, race and gender discrimination, a love for music, a young girl's life on the road. There's morethis book is jazz history, love story, family triumph and tribulation, and whole lot of adventure. Stitched together with lyrics, this is a fascinating saga of a life mostly spent on the road, and the sacrifices and rewards Jeannie Cheatham faced as she followed her muse. I laughed and I gasped as I read this book. It's a great read!"
Julianne Malveaux, Ph.D., economist and syndicated columnist who writes for more than twenty national newspapers, including USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Detroit News, and San Francisco Examiner
"Jeannie, I never got a chance to thank you for writing the song Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On, so let me do that [now]. Touring with the Some of My Best Friends are the Blues revue gave me a chance to perform your song in twenty-one cities, and the audience response to it was great. You know you got the audience when they start slapping their knees. I know you've written a book [of the same name]; accept my best wishes on the success of it."
Della Reese, world famous singer, television and movie actress, author, and minister
Jeannie Cheatham is a living legend in jazz and blues. A pianist, singer, songwriter, and co-leader of the Sweet Baby Blues Band, she has played and sung with many of the greats in blues and jazzT-Bone Walker, Dinah Washington, Cab Callaway, Joe Williams, Al Hibbler, Odetta, and Jimmy Witherspoon. Cheatham toured with Big Mama Thornton off and on for ten years and was featured with Thornton and Sippie Wallace in the award-winning PBS documentary Three Generations of the Blues. Her music, which has garnered national and international acclaim, has been described as unrestrained, exuberant, soulful, rollicking, wicked, virtuous, wild, and truthful. Cheatham's signature song, "Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On" is a staple in jazz and blues clubs across America and in Europe, Africa, and Japan.
In this delightfully frank autobiography, Jeannie Cheatham recalls a life that has been as exuberant, virtuous, wild, and truthful as her music. She begins in Akron, Ohio, where she grew up in a vibrant multiethnic neighborhood surrounded by a family of strong women. From those roots, she launched a musical career that took her from the Midwest to California, doing time along the way everywhere from a jail cell in Dayton, Ohio, where she was innocently caught in a police raid, to the University of Wisconsin-Madisonwhere she and Jimmy Cheatham taught music. Cheatham writes of a life spent fighting racism and sexism, of rage and resolve, misery and miracles, betrayals and triumphs, of faith almost lost in dark places, but mysteriously regained in a flash of light. Cheatham's autobiography is also the story of her fifty-years-and-counting love affair and musical collaboration with her husband and band partner, Jimmy Cheatham.
