Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1474185
Alan Walden, impresario behind Lynyrd Skynyrd, remembers those times. "When Led Zeppelin would tour on a Starjet, they would bring along chefs from Italy and France," he said. "Well, the Allman Brothers took Mama on their jet, and I always admired the class they showed in doing that." John T. Edge, founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and author of several books, including The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, grew up in Macon and ate regularly at the H&H. "My father loved the creamed corn, so we ate there whenever I was not in school, and he would banter with Mama Louise," he said. "The food was good, of course, but it was more about what had transpired there than it was the candied yams. The H&H was the front porch of an integrated Georgia, serving the promise of what can happen if Black and white gathered together to conceive a future. The place is a symbol of the future-tense South." Since that time, the earthy grande dame who addresses everyone as "baby," "dear heart" and "darlin'" -- often within the same sentence -- has wielded her spatula and drawled sing-song beatitudes for countless pilgrims, including Oprah Winfrey. For one of Hudson's birthdays, Mayor Jim Marshall issued a proclamation conferring an additional title that made her aristocracy official: "Lady Mama Louise." together, playing music together. It was almost like a religion. And Louise's cooking was a sort of soul food sacrament. No one went hungry around her." Music promoter Gary Montgomery said he still feels wistful just thinking about those times. "Fried chicken, ham hocks and the best possible bread pudding, and she'd mix lemonade with iced tea. If you were really family, you came through the backdoor and through the kitchen to get your hug first and then place an order." (You were also expected to use the backdoor if you were noticeably tripping on Psilocybin. Not that there was any shame to that; "The H," as it was known, eventually incorporated a mushroom into its logo.) "I didn't have a mama, and she came along when I sorely needed one," recalled GRAMMY-nominated country and blues singer Lee Roy Parnell. "When I was 17, I ran away from home to seek my fame and fortune in Macon. I was a little, skinny, redheaded guitar player who needed some guidance, and she pretty much kept me on the straight and narrow most of the time. I couldn't stand the thought of letting her down. During that beautiful time in our lives, all of us musicians became brothers and sisters, and Mama Louise held dominion as our communal mama, as the queen of that strange and wonderful hamlet. It was all about being fed, and I don't just mean with collard greens. She nourished our souls. Mama Louise still represents Macon to me. It's a city with such a deep wellspring of music, friendship and spirituality. If it doesn't touch you, you probably don't belong there." Before his death, psychedelic rocker Col. Bruce Hampton told a reporter, "It's no exaggeration to say Mama Louise kept me alive in the seventies. Back then, she had sacks that you sat on. Grain sacks, I guess. I remember the meals costing about 50 cents. Nobody had any money, really, so we'd just pay her a week or so later, after a gig. She'd fix breakfast, too, at some ungodly hour like 4 a.m., and Bunky Odom would be the only one there. I think of her as the Mother Teresa of Macon, with her grace and humility. Just watching her run the cash register was a religious experience for me." A SYMBOL OF THE FUTURE-TENSE SOUTH For her part, Hudson got the adventure of a lifetime. Soon enough, all of these shaggy kids were more than able to pay their tab. When the Allman Brothers headed to California on a leg of their 1972 tour, they took her along. The plan was for her to cook for a L.A. press party, but she was having too much fun to work. "I just went around with the band," she told a reporter in August of that year. "We didn't do much sight-seeing. We mostly just loafed around the hotel and went to the pool and the lounge. I love the Allman Brothers' music and that sweet voice Gregg has behind it. Every album they make, they give it to me." They did more than that. On the cover of their second album, Idlewild South, the band immortalized her in the credits: "Vittles: Louise." "They was sweet boys," she liked to say, adding mischievously, "They could be bad men, but they was always sweet boys." 42 maconmagazine.com | JUNE/JULY 2022