Central Georgia has a long history of producing music legends—Little Richard, the Allman Brothers, James Brown, and Otis Redding, to name a few. If you walk through Macon’s Georgia Music Hall of Fame, you can get a sense of how these music legends got their start. The Rhythm & Blues Revue features a number of jazz bands, including Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers. His band was one of the many bands that emerged during the late fifties and early sixties. Bands like Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers were becoming more popular, and they would play at fraternity houses and social events nearly every weekend. The Rhythm & Blues Review room has assorted pictures of Johnny Jenkins and his band, and if you look at one of the pictures, you can see the humble saxophone player, Ishmael Mosley, standing next to its more famous member, Otis Redding.

            Ishmael’s humble beginnings started in Macon. He was adopted as a toddler into the Mosley family after spending his first two years being raised by the staff of Macon Hospital (now the Medical Center). Ishmael grew up loving music, especially the music of the 1940s. “Music then was music—it was something you could listen to.” Bands like Stardust and musicians such as trumpet player Harry James inspired Ishmael. When Ishmael was twelve years old, he learned of his adoption and at that moment, made a promise to himself. He would learn how to be a mechanic, one day own his own house, and he would learn how to play an instrument. But Ishmael had been a sick child. “My mother always said I had sick tonsils,” recalled Ishmael, and his swollen adenoids cast doubt on him ever blowing a horn. His mother tried to concede by telling Ishmael he could learn to play the piano, but, “I thought the piano was a girl’s instrument.” Nevertheless, once or twice a week, Ishmael would meet with Gilbert Johnson. Gilbert played for some churches and had an organ. “It had the same keys as a piano, but had a different tune, so that made it better than the piano.” Then in the tenth grade, Hudson High got their first band, and Ishmael thought he had his chance, but the band directors said tenth graders were too old to join the band. Ishmael graduated in June 1946 having never played in a band.

            After graduation, Ishmael and some friends decided to join the army. These new recruits started at Fort Benning, then left for Fort Bragg, and finally got on a troop train to San Antonio, Texas. In the army, one of the soldiers in Ishmael’s barracks had a saxophone. “Every day, he would come out on the balcony and play his horn. It was sweet music to hear,” said Ishmael.Ishmael soon bought the horn from his barrackmate. “I couldn’t make anything out of the sound. The guys ran me out of my barracks. I went to the day room, and [those guys] ran me out, then I went out to the practice field, then they ran me out of there. But I kept at it, until finally, I got a tone with my horn. I halfway began to pick out notes.” Ishmael was transferred out of San Antonio and was shipped out to MacDeal field. When he got there, the same thing happened: he was kicked out of all the buildings he tried to practice in, when after a few months, a band came in from Italy. “Back then, the service was segregated, and we heard they were going to put a band together from the north area. Pop was the director of the band, and he came down and asked who was it trying to play saxophone and if he’d be interested in joining the new band. Before I could even answer, all the guys in my barracks grabbed my clothes, all my stuff, my horn, and me, and carried me out of the barracks to my new quarters.”

            The band consisted of ten to fifteen people. One of the players had been to Juliard, another had been in professional bands, and the piano player could write music. “The beginners learned to play after awhile. Then we got to hold our horns pretty good, but Pop wouldn’t let us play in the band yet. Musicians came in from town, and we would have jam sessions. After a time, we thought we were doing pretty good. By then, Pop could distinguish which one of us was playing by our sounds, and he would come in and cuss us out.”

            “Some of us had gotten where they could play pretty good, but Pop still wouldn’t let me play my horn with the band. Instead, Pop put me on bass drum. I did pretty good, but one morning the wind was blowing, and I was missing the beat…and Pop cussed me out and said, ‘Get all your clothes, your foot locker, and go work at the mess hall.’ I went to the mess hall, and for three days, after I finished working, I went back to the band hall and worked on my horn. And the days I wasn’t working, I went to the band hall, and I’d practice.” Finally, Ishmael could read music and could play. Pop came back to Ishmael and invited him into the band.

            “I was playing, and I was being heard. I played third alto until ’49, then Pop was restationed…, and the band broke up, and I was discharged in July 1949.” When Ishmael came home, he didn’t know his father was seriously. Another man was taking care of him, and Ishmael played for his dad. “Dad’s face lit up when I played. Then he died the next day.”

            Ishmael’s music did not end with his father, however. Through his cousin, Ishmael met a man named Melvin Welch who invited Ishmael to come play in Melvin’s band. “We were playing for this club on Broadway, and Little Richard Pendleman was our singer. I played Tutti Fruiti, Long Tall Sally, and lots of other songs.” Ishmael also began working at Robins Air Force Base as a mechanic, fulfilling his second life goal. After that, Ishmael played with Earnest McLendon, then Earnest “Ace” White, and Blues Boy Mathis. He also played with Willie Reed (Little Willie Reed) who liked to sing Little Richard’s songs. “Willie had a sleeping disease, and we could tell when he would fall asleep because of he would get on a high note and stay on it.” Ishmael played with Jazz Bo Brown and the House Rockers till Jazz Bo went to Florida. Ishmael also played behind Nappy Brown and behind the Midnighters.

            At that time, Otis Redding sang with many of the same bands that Ishmael played with, but after Brown went to Florida, Ishmael was left without a band. Then Otis came by Ishmael’s house and asked if Ishmael was playing with anyone. Otis was playing with Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, and they needed a saxophone player. “That Sunday night, I went down to the club on Poplar Street, and met the managers, Jake Lawson and Earnest Staw. Otis, Willie Bowden (Clooney), Samuel Davis, and Johnny Jenkins were the band members.

            “When I was playing with the Pinetoppers, Phil Walden was booking our gigs. One night, Phil had booked us at a club in Atlanta, across the street from the club Sam Cook was playing at. We played Friday and Saturday night, we did pretty good. After we started playing, I told Otis, ‘Sam Cook is singing across the street, so don’t sing his songs. Otis sang two or three songs, then sang one of Sam Cook’s songs, and the whole club left and went across the street.”

            Phil arranged a recording session in Atlanta where Ishmael and the others recorded “Pinetop” and “Love Twist.” The record came out, and Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers got a number of gigs because of its success. “We were playing so much, we’d start on Wednesday going out of town to some college.… Thursday, we’d be in Alabama, at Auburn, then Friday, we’d be playing at UGA. In the meantime, we had a club in Bellview, Gay Nights, and we met once a week at one of the other homes.… There were so many times, I was holding my horn and was dead asleep, but I did it because it was a joy to play.”

            Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers ultimately got a chance to go to Nashville. “We were rehearsing “These Arms Are Mine,” and the week before we went to the Nashville, I had to go to night shift, then I didn’t get to go. Phil was pushing Johnny to be a celebrity. They weren’t pushing Otis. All the money was behind Johnny, but he wouldn’t go anywhere where he had to fly or get on a ship, so that hindered him. At the recording studio, there was time left, so Otis recorded “These Arms Are Mine,” and they started playing Otis on the radio.

            Sam, the road manager, came to Ishmael and said, “Ish, we are fixing to make some big money now. We’ll pay $500 a week, but you have to be a full-time musician. You’ll have to quit the base.” The road as a musician was hard. “You could catch it out there on the road,” said Ishmael. “I knew that I could depend on the job on the base. A friend of mine, Percy Welch, had been on the road on the way to Texas, and when he got there, the club was closed. And they had no money upfront, and they were on their own. One night, we were staying in Columbus and had to sleep in the car, and we all caught the flu.”

            Ishmael knew it was a difficult choice. “I can’t do that. I have a family…my clothes, my food, they all would have come out that $500, then you’re on the road, and that can be expensive.” Ismael quit the band, but it would be a few years before he quit playing altogether. “After I left the Pinetoppers, I played with Horace and Zodiac, from ’67–68, then Johnny Blues Boy, then I left him and played with his brother.

            “About 1969, I had just about stopped playing with the bands. Some of the clubs were so small the sound was bouncing off the walls. The guitars were so loud my ears would still be ringing the next day. The last time I played professionally, I played an American Legion fashion show.

            “It was something that I wanted to do, and when I stopped, I put my horn in the shop, and never went back to get it. After I didn’t have a horn, and I didn’t have anything. I could play, it just kind of fell out of me.”

            Since then, Ishmael has bought a tenor sax and an alto sax and played a couple of times in his church and the odd jam session every now and then. “It’s a funny thing; now most of the musicians I played with are either ministers, deacons, or stewards [in the Methodist church]. And I’ve done what I promised myself I’d do: become a mechanic, own a decent home, and be a musician…good home, good wife, good life,” Ishmael said with a smile. “I can’t complain.”

Karen Pennings lives in Macon, Georgia, with her husband.