"I practiced what I preached," Amos Milbum told me last July, referring to his old hits, hits like "Bad, Bad Whiskey," "Let Me Go Home, Whiskey," and "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer."

"I was a heavy drinker. I loved that Scotch. And the devil kept tellin' me: Go on, Amos, drink all you want to, it'll never hurt you none. I drank myself into two strokes." It was a low, faint voice that spoke. It bore little resemblance to that cool, tough Amos Milburn voice of 25, 30 years ago, that voice that bespoke the ceaseless saxophones of salvation, the crossing and uncrossing of tangible nylon knees, the eightfold path of the unfiltered Kool, and the miracle of Our Lady of the After-Hours Joint. But the party has been over for years now.

Amos Milburn was born in Houston, Texas, on April 1, 1927. He graduated from high school in 1942, at the age of 15. Lying about his age, he signed up with the Navy for the duration of World War II, and served three years as a steward's mate aboard an infantry landing craft. During the course of his service, Milburn earned 13 battle stars in engagements at Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and the Philippines. His boogie-woogie piano-playing was in demand at officers' clubs on islands everywhere. On May 5, 1945, 18-year-old Milburn was discharged, and returned home to Houston. He formed a small band and hit the clubs.

He was playing a joint in San Antonio in 1946. A woman named Lola Anne Cullum, wife of a Houston dentist, approached Amos and explained that she had recently started a booking and management agency in Houston. Not Tong after, the two got together in Houston and she made some raw, paper-backed tapes of Milbum's songs and sent them to Aladdin Records in Los Angeles. In September of the same year, Milbum and Cullum (along with Lightnin' Hopkins, another of Lola Anne's Texas discoveries) traveled to the Coast. On September 12, Milburn cut his first sides, for Aladdin.

Milburn's second release, a version of the 1940 Don Raye hit, "Down The Road Apiece" (the same song that the Rolling Stones did in The Rolling Stones, Now!), was a minor hit, but it wasn't until early 1949 that he had his first Number One R&B hit, with his own "Chicken Shack Boogie."

"Chicken Shack Boogie" was a hardrocker celebrating the countless after-hours joints hidden away on the outskirts of Texas towns, places where you could eat, drink, and often gamble until past the break of day. Thirty years later, the chicken shacks are still rocking hard. Next time you're in Austin, find Webberville Road and follow it 'til it fades away into dirt: you'll be at Ernie's Chicken Shack.

For more than ten years, from 1946 to 1957, Amos Milburn cut some of the toughest records in the history of rock 'n' roll, records built upon raw electric guitar, drunken tenor sax (usually played by the great Maxwell Davis), and Milbum's own piano and voice. In "Walkin' Blues" (1950) and "Roll Mr. Jelly" (1952), he bragged about what a great fuck he was. (In the first song, he sang of raising women from the dead merely by shaking his pecker at their corpses.) In "Let's Rock A While" (1951) and "Rock, Rock, Rock" (1952), he helped to define the classic rock 'n' roll lyric that was to eventually sweep the white folks off their feet a few years later. "Bad, Bad Whiskey" (1950), "Just One More Drink" (1951), "Let Me Go Home, Whiskey" (1953), "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" (1953), "Good, Good Whiskey" (1954), "Vicious, Vicious Vodka" (1954), "Juice, Juice, Juice" (1956), and "Rum and CocaCola" (1957) all dealt with Milburn's demon,booze. (He even had a rocker about drying out, the 1954 "Milk and Water.")

After "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer," in 1953, Amos Milbum never had another hit. Aladdin Records folded in the late Fifties. In 1960, Milbum had a single released by King Records; then, in 1962, he signed, with the new Motown label. One single and one album, Blues Boss, were released by Motown the following year, but nothing happened. There was just no room in soul music for Milbum's bad-ass chickenshack music.

Milbum continued to perform until 1968. In 1969, he had his first stroke. In 1970, laying on a couch in Cleveland, watching a football game on television, he had his second stroke, and emerged a/i invalid. He quit drinking, returned to Houston, where he sits to this day.

"I still got my Kool Super Longs," he told me. "I got my ice water and my Coca-Cola. Don't allow no booze in my home, no sir. Somebody wanna visit me, they better leave their bottle at the door. I'm a Christian man now, and I leave it all up to the Lord. I figure it the Lord wanted me to quit these Kools, he'd let me know,/like he let me know about the booze with them two strokes."

Four weeks before I talked with Amos, he had been on the operating table. "They took my leg off," he told me. "The one that used to stomp all that good rock 'n' roll, all £ that fine boogie-woogie on the old piano. J They cut it clean off."

And there he is. The first great rock 'n' roll £ piano man, and perhaps, next to Jerry Lee ° Lewis, the greatest yet. Navy disability | checks and Kool Super Longs. It's come to £ that.