“Once you make it too much business in it . . .

 . . . the fun kind of leaves, too.”                                              

                       

Mr. Herbert Wiley has approached work many different ways during his long life. He is an Oxford native who owned Wiley’s Shoes on the Courthouse Square and played music in his band the Checkmates. He was raised working in the shop, learned his work ethic from his father, and eventually ran it until 2003 when he retired. His nephew Raymond Wells has moved the shop north of town where he runs it today. Mr. Wiley’s retirement allowed him to pursue his true love, music. In the 1962 he formed the Checkmates, a rhythm and blues band that played juke joints and frat parties around northern Mississippi as well as Memphis, Atlanta, and Chicago. They cut a few records, but the gigs never paid the bills. He continued working in the shop during the day and playing in the band at night. When Mr. Wiley’s second child, a daughter was born in 1970, he began working full time in the shoe shop and put the band behind him. 

Wiley and the Checkmates performing at the Ponderosa Stomp April 2008. House of Blues; New Orleans, Louisiana

Or so he thought. Just before Mr. Wiley closed shop in the new millennium, he was overheard playing bass in his shop. As Oxford punk rockers The Preachers Kids rehearsed nearby, Mr. Wiley played along with the band. One could hear his bass on the street. Word got out, and from there the second version of the Checkmates formed. Even though Mr. Wiley had worked his whole life to earn the leisure time to spend doing things he enjoyed like playing music, he says that forming the new band “was like somebody threw me a hot potato, and I had to catch it,” says Mr. Wiley. As they record their third album, he laughs about how much more work this band is from the old days, calling it a “three way heart attack.”

While Mr. Wiley enjoys attention for his music, he is still proud of his craftsmanship from his days repairing shoes. In the following pages he demonstrates some his old equipment, now in his nephew’s shop.

Mr. Wiley polishes a pair of shoes at Wells Shoe Repair.

Mr. Wiley demonstrates how that knife sliced open his arm. He had hit an artery. Blood was spurting. He sewed up the wound himself.