Seventy-Five Years Later, We Fight Racism and Fascism at Home

Seventy-five years ago this evening, my father was one of thousands of American GIs massed on the British side of the English channel. On the evening of June 5, 1944 he and all the other GIs were handed copies of this letter from General Eisenhower letting them know that the long-awaited invasion of France would take place in the morning. It’s hard to comprehend that this was a moment when the history of the world hung in the balance and that men like my father, who came from a small mountain town and had never left his home state of Washington until the war, shouldered the hopes of the free world. Lucky for me and the rest of his family, my father would not land on Omaha Beach until June 8, the third day of the invasion, and therefore missed the worst of the fighting. Too many of his comrades were not so fortunate. They died in Europe, Africa, and Asia to keep racism and fascism from the United States. They would never have imagined that they would succeed in stopping Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito only to have proud racists and fascists in the White House and in Congress less than a century later. That’s our fight, and it will be just as tough and existential as theirs. We must accept nothing less than full Victory!

Willie Mays

On May 24, 1951, a twenty-year-old outfielder for the Minneapolis Millers in the American Association, was sitting in a movie theater in Sioux City, Iowa, when this message flashed across the screen: WILLIE MAYS CALL YOUR HOTEL.

When he got back to his room, there was another message waiting for him—to call Leo Durocher, the impatient, profane manager of the New York Giants. When the two were finally connected via phone, Durocher told Mays that he was calling him up to the majors to help the Giants, who were struggling.

Mays protested, saying that he wasn’t ready for the majors. After all, he had only played 35 games in Triple A.

“What are you hitting, Willie?”, asked Durocher.

“.477,” replied Mays.

Durocher told him in no uncertain terms to get his ass to Philadelphia, because the he was starting in center field for the Giants the very next day.

The Giants won all three games against the Phillies. Mays went 0-for-5 that first game and 0-for-12 for the three-game series against the Phillies.

Twenty-year-old Willie Mays meets the press before his first big-league game

Willie was shaken by his debut slump at the plate, but Durocher sat him down.

 “Look son,” Durocher told him. “I brought you up here to do one thing. That’s to play center field. You’re the best center fielder I’ve ever seen. As long as I’m here, you’re going to play center field. Tomorrow, next week, next month. As long as Leo Durocher is manager of this team you will be on this club because you’re the best ball player I have ever seen.”

The next day the Giants returned home to the Polo Grounds in New York to face the Boston Braves and their star pitcher Warren Spahn, the winningiest lefty in baseball.

In the first inning Spahn dispatched Eddie Stanky and Whitey Lockman. Mays took his place in the batter’s box and knocked a Spahn pitch over the left-field roof for his first major-league hit. He was on his way. ("I'll never forgive myself,” Spahn joked years later. “We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if I'd only struck him out.")

Willie Howard Mays, Jr. was born in Westfield, Alabama in 1931. His grandfather was a talented baseball player, his father played semi-pro baseball in the Negro Leagues, and his mother was locally famous for her skills in basketball and track.

In high school, Mays was a star point guard, quarterback, and outfielder and played in the Negro Leagues on weekends. He helped the Birmingham Black Barons win the Negro League World Series in 1948 and was pursued by several major-league teams. He ended up signing with the New York Giants.

Willie Mays (in the back row, center) with the Birmingham Barons of the Negro League

Willie Mays won the National League Rookie of the Year award in 1951. Mays was in the on-deck circle when Bobby Thompson hit his “Shot Heard Round The World” homer that put the Giants in the Subway Series against the New York Yankees that year. The Giants were beaten 4 games to 2, but the 1951 Series was memorable in that it was the only time Mays played against Joe Dimaggio and because the Giants fielded the first major-league all-African-American outfield—Mays, Hank Thompson, and Monte Irvin.

Mays was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and missed the next two seasons. He came roaring back in 1954 with a spectacular year in which he lead the American League in hitting with a .345 average, hit 41 homers, and was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player. He also led the Giants to another World Series, this time against the Cleveland Indians.

Willie and the Giants swept the Indians in that Series, which is known for one of the most famous defensive plays in baseball history.

In the first game, held in the Polo Grounds in New York, the Giants and the Indians were tied 2-2 in the eighth inning. Giants pitcher Sal “The Barber” Maglie walked lead-off hitter Larry Doby and then Rosen singled to put men on second and third with no outs. Don Liddle was brought in to pitch to the next batter, Vic Wertz, who already had three hits in the game.

To say that center field in the Polo Grounds was as big as the Grand Canyon would be only a slight overstatement. You could hit a ball 482 feet toward the centerfield wall there and still wind up one foot short of a home run. If a centerfielder positioned himself 400 feet (a home run in most parks today) from home plate, the wall would be 83 feet behind him.

Mays was playing in shallow center field when Wertz stroked a screaming shot to straight-away center. Mays instantly turned his back to home plate and streaked to the spot, about 425 feet from home, where the ball was destined to return to earth. Running at full speed, Mays made a spectacular, over-the-shoulder catch with his back to home plate as his hat flew off his head.

Mays’ grab of Wertz’ fly ball has been forever immortalized in sports history as “The Catch,” but the next part of the play—let’s call it “The Throw”—was actually even more impressive. As soon as the ball touched his glove, Mays somehow managed to plan his feet, spin back back towards the plate, and launch a perfect strike to second base, keeping the baserunners from scoring. The Giants got out of the inning and went on to win the game with a walk-off home run from Dusty Rhodes.

“The Catch”

The 1950s were the glory days for New York City’s baseball teams, with the game’s top centerfielders—Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider—all playing in the city and at the peak of their careers. But in 1958 the Dodger decamped to Los Angeles and the Giants moved to San Francisco. It’s intriguing to think about how many more home runs Mays might have hit had he not played so many games in the wind tunnel by the Bay they called Candlestick Park.

My grandfather took me to my first major-league game in 1961. If I would have designed a perfect game in my mind beforehand, that day in the seats on the third-base side was it. The Giants beat the hated Dodgers in a close game. Mays hit a home run and Juan Marichal won the game. Given the victory, I was gracious enough to acknowleddge the homer hit by Duke Snider in that game, as he was the only Dodger I could stomach at that tender, ultra-partisan age. (Actually, I still feel the same way, although Sandy Koufax eventually joined Duke on my two-person list of Dodgers whom I respect.)

In 1962 the Dodgers and the Giants tied for the NL pennant and the Giants had to win a three-game playoff to advance to the World Series against some team called the New York Yankees, who for some reason were huge favorites. The Giants took New York to seven games, the last of which was played in Yankee Stadium. Bill Terry pitched for the Yanks and Jack Sanford was on the mound for the Giants. The score was 1-0 Yankees when the Giants came up to bat in the ninth. Matty Alou led off with a successful bunt, but Terry struck out Felipe Alou and Chuck Hiller. Willie Mays delivered a clutch, two-out double that should have tied the game, but Roger Maris came up with a great throw from right field that kept Matty Alou from scoring.

As I watched on our living-room television, Terry decided to pitch to Willie McCovey instead of walking and facing the equally fearsome Orlando Cepeda. McCovey crushed Terry’s second pitch—he would later say that it was the hardest he had ever hit a ball—over Terry’s head. 

Bobby Richardson was the Yankees’ second baseman. If you stretched Bobby Richardson’s slight frame on a medieval rack for nine months and put lifts in his shoes, you might have extended him to a height of five feet, nine inches. I followed the track of what was sure to be a Series-winning home run off McCovey’s bat for about half a second and then watched Richardson somehow leap about twelve and a half feet in the air and catch the line drive in the uppermost webbing of his glove. It was the darkest day of my young life, and I still hate to think of that obscene moment.

If you are curious as to whether baseball has changed much since those days, just ponder the game between the Milwaukee Braves and the Giants that took place on July 2, 1963. Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal each pitched SIXTEEN scoreless innings in the most epic pitching duel ever. Marichal held Hank Aaron hitless in six at-bats. Spahn took the mound in the sixteenth, after pitching for FOUR HOURS AND TEN MINUTES and gave up a walk-off homer to—you guessed it—Willie Mays.

In the 1965 season Mays rose to the occasion again, hitting 52 home runs, winning his second NL MVP award, and becoming the highest paid player in baseball.

That was Willie’s high-water mark. The financially strapped Giants traded him to the Mets in the middle of the 1972 season, which actually felt right because Willie was always more popular with New York fans than he was with San Franciscans. He hit a home run in his first plate appearance with the Mets. In 1972 and ’73 Willie was the oldest position player in baseball.

As fate would have it, I was going to college in New York City when Mays came to the Mets, and I made two trips out to Shea Stadium to try to catch him. He didn’t play in the first game I went to, but I saw him pinch-hit a single the next time.

In 1973 he became the oldest position player (he was 42) to play in a World Series, but he missed a ring when the Oakland A’s beat the Mets. Willie’s last trip to the plate came in that Series.

Willie Mays played twenty-two seasons in the majors and racked up an unreal legacy:

·        Retired with a career batting average of .302, 3,283 hits, 660 home runs (unjuiced), and 7.095 outfield putouts (all-time MLB record).

·        Won Rookie of the Year, two MVP awards, and 12 Golden Gloves (an award that didn’t even exist during Mays’ first four seasons).

·        HoldsHe holds the MLB record for most All-Star game appearances Most All Star games (24).

·        Had eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons.

·        Hit four runs in a game. (He was on deck ready to go for a fifth when the game ended.)

·        Is the only major league player to have hit a home run in every inning from the 1st through the 16th innings.

·        Elected to the Hall of Fame in 1979. Twenty-three sportswriters voted AGAINST him. New York Daily News columnist Dick Young wrote, "If Jesus Christ were to show up with his old baseball glove, some guys wouldn't vote for him. He dropped the cross three times, didn't he?"

The fans and players who saw him in action knew where Willie Mays stood in the history of baseball.

Leo Durocher talked about the obvious joy that Willie had for the game as well as his ridiculous talents: “If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases, and performed a miracle in the field every day, I'd still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar: hit, hit with power, run, throw and field. And he had the other magic ingredient that turns a superstar into a super Superstar. Charisma.”

Ted Williams, who hardly every talked, much less doled out compliments to other players, put it best:  “They invented the game for Willie Mays.”

In July of 2009 President Barack Obama flew Air Force One to St. Louis to throw out the first pitch at the All Star game. He invited Willie Mays to accompany him, and the two black pioneers had a extraordinary discussion during the flight, with Mays telling the first black President that he was so proud on Electiion Night 2008 that he couldn’t sleep.

Obama awarded Willie Mays the Medal of Freedom in November, 2015. "Willie also served our country,” Obama noted at the ceremony. “In his quiet example while excelling on one of America's biggest stages he helped carry forward the banner of civil rights. It's because of giants like Willie that someone like me could even think about running for president.”

The “Say Hey Kid” turns 88 today.

Happy Birthday to Walter Horton

When I was going to college in NYC, I hitchhiked up to Boston several times to see Walter Horton play at Joe’s Place, where he was backed up by Johnny Nicholas and his great band. Those shows were a total revelation to me—Horton’s sound was huge and gorgeous, and he greatly expanded my notion of what was possible on the harmonica. I also able to spend time with Walter at his table between sets. Walter was by nature a shy person, but after a few drinks he would let out with all kinds of outrageous statements. He gave me his address in Chicago and told me the amazing experience that would be mine if I ever showed up for a lesson. “I got a motherf----n’ x-ray machine, man, and I will slap that f----r up against my face and you will see EVERYTHING.”

A few years later I was back in my hometown of Seattle. Walter brought his band to town to play the Rainbow, a popular music venue. I had a day job downtown then and on the day of Walter’s show I dropped in at a nearby liquor store and there was Walter, standing in line at the checkout counter, wearing the fur hat that he often favored.

I was working a lot with at that time in a band led Brian Butler, a talented singer and guitarist, and the two of us went to the Rainbow to hear Horton. Walter and his band (Left Hand Frank on guitar, Rick Molina on bass, and Ted Harvey on drums) really raised the roof off the joint that night. Walter was in stellar form. When he was on, no one could touch him. He put more air in the harp than anyone, before or since.

At the end of the night, with the crowd going crazy for more, there was a quick huddle between the club owner and Walter on stage. Then the club owner grabbed the mic and let everyone know that they had just worked out a deal to have Walter play the club again the following evening.

Awesome! Except…wait a minute—Brian was booked that night. That was our gig! So another conversation happened with the club owner, Walter, and Brian and we quickly agreed that both bands would play the next night and alternate sets, with us starting out.

I thought a lot that day about sharing the stage with Walter, but by the time I got to the Rainbow I was feeling no pressure and was just determined to do a good show and savor every second of the thrill of sharing a stage with the best harmonica player on the planet. We jumped up and did a solid opening set, Walter and his guys got up and killed it, and we did another short set. I had some friends in the audience that night who had saved me a prime seat, and now it was time to have a couple of well-earned drinks and sit back and watch Walter work his magic.

I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Rick Molina.

“Walter wants you to play the next set with him,” he was telling me. My brain went soft and I looked across the room to see Walter beckoning to me with a crooked finger. Somehow I floated across the room to him.

“You get on stage with the band and play through the amp,” Walter told me. “I’ll put a mic down on the floor and work that.”

I grabbed my harps and microphone, climbed onstage in a daze, took a place on stage between Left Hand Frank and Ted Harvey, and plugged in. Walter put a stand with a vocal mic a couple of feet below us on the dance floor and kicked us off. For the whole set I played fills around his vocals while he and Frank took all the solos. I could have cared less, as long as Walter Horton thought I belonged up there. I just stared down at the back of Walter’s head, listened to his amazing harmonica sound, and did the best I could.

And then it was over. I shook Walter’s hand, thanked him and Rick, and watched the band head off in their station wagon to the motel. I went home and bounced around the walls for a while and then headed out the door and paced the streets until dawn, trying to walk off my excitement, but that was a thrill that’s never worn off. Definitely my most memorable musical experience, bar none.

Happy Birthday, Muddy Waters

I finally made my first visit to the Mississippi Delta three summers ago. We stayed three days in Clarksdale and made the trip out to the old Stovall plantation. We visited the spot where Muddy Waters’ sharecropping cabin had once stood. That humble structure had been moved to the Delta Blues Museum, but it was still an experience to stand on that spot, look across the road to the huge fields in the distance, and imagine McKinley Morganfield on a summer evening after a long day in those furrows, working on his slide guitar playing and beginning his transformation into Muddy Waters, international godfather of the blues.

Like a lot of guys my age, my first blues record was a Paul Butterfield album. Soon after I bought the album “Fathers and Sons,” on which had Paul backed up Muddy. The very next day I was back in the record store to get “The Best of Muddy Waters,” and I just wore that thing out. Muddy was the gate to the blues for me. He quickly led me to Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells—the whole historical blues genius lineup was rolled out for me by Muddy Waters. He changed my life before I ever saw him in person.

From 1968 on I saw Muddy onstage many times. The first time was at Eagles Auditorium in Seattle—that was the first time I saw Paul Oscher in action, too. I’ll never forget Muddy’s Academy-Award enactment of every ounce of drama in “Long Distance Call” that night. I saw him at Ungano’s in New York City two years later, just after his terrible automobile accident—he apologized for sitting down. There was an improbable week-long gig at the posh Maisonette Room at the St. Regis Hotel, where Muddy gamely asked out for requests and a blue-haired matron cradling a martini called out for “When The Saints Go Marching In.” That spurred my friends and I into action, and we began shouting out for all of Muddy’s hits, which he delivered up to us. The great Louis Myers played guitar on that show. There was the time a bunch of us drove from Manhattan to Poughkeepsie to catch a Muddy Waters show at Vassar. We stood outside afterwards and waved goodbye to Muddy and the band as they pulled out of the parking lot in a weathered station wagon and pulling a small trainer with their equipment. I caught Muddy twice at Antone’s, where Jimmie Vaughan, Lou Ann Barton, and Kim Wilson sat in and delighted him. I even got to open for him once, at a show at the Showbox in Seattle.

Onstage, Muddy looked like a king, carried himself like a king, sang like a king, and played like a king. Thirty years after making the move to Chicago as an illiterate field hand and creating a new, amplified update of the Delta blues, Muddy was traveling the globe and delivering one great show after another in country after country, and no one who saw him will forget his regal nature, his total command of the stage, and the intensity and uniqueness of his music. Muddy Waters traveled a personal journey that most of us can’t even begin to comprehend, but we can spend the rest of our lives savoring the gift he left behind—some of the most beautiful and most soulful music ever recorded.

Kim Wilson

Recently I was in my hometown of Seattle for a gig. I walked around downtown and dropped in at the Pike Place Market. I made my way past the guys flinging monstrous salmons and headed for the back of the Market, where a piece of my personal history hangs about sixty feet above Western Avenue.

When I started playing music in Seattle in the early 1970s, there were only a couple of clubs that regularly hired blues bands—the Place Pigalle (aka “Pig Alley” or “the Pig”) in the Market and the Boulder Lounge right around the corner on First Avenue. I was in a band led by the great guitarist/singer Isaac Scott, who held down the regular gig at the Pig. Tom McFarland and his group were the mainstays at the Boulder Lounge.

The Boulder Lounge was furnished with black and red leather booths and featured not only Tom and his band but Korean go-go dancers of vague immigration status dancing in cages. The Pig was one of the last remnants of Seattle’s wild, bare-knuckle waterfront past. It was a ramshackle wreck of a place with an ancient bar, an even older wood stove that barely kept the interior from icing over in the winter, and a sort of a stage against the back wall. The base clientele were neighborhood derelicts and winos, but on when we played on weekends the core crowd would be augmented by aging beatniks, young wanna-be hipsters, and guys off whatever Navy ship happened to be tied up down the street. Most of the time the Pig was just a harmless dive, but fights could break out in a hurry and it could get really weird in there. I once saw two guys break the ends off of beer pitchers against the bar and go at each other with the jagged pieces, and another night some inspired patron hurled a keg of beer out the window and crushed the roof of a car parked down below on Western.

One night in August in 1975 I was playing there with Isaac’s band when a group of well-dressed folks came down the rickety stairs and into the club. Any kind of stylishness stood out in that venue, so we noted their arrival. The band took a break and I headed to the bar. One of the sharply dressed guys came up to me and introduced himself: “I’m so-and-so from Ada Records in Bellevue, and I’m here with the world’s greatest harmonica player. He’s in town for a big show tomorrow and we were wondering if it would be okay with you if he got up and performed a couple of tunes and plugged the show.”

This announcement put me at ease, because these people were obviously crazy, just like the rest of the people in the Pig. This was not a venue that the world’s greatest harmonica player would home in on, no legitimate record-company executives would be caught dead in there, and none of the people in the club could have afforded a ticket to some big show.

“Hey,” I told him, “If the world’s greatest harmonica player wants to give me a half-hour break, I’m all for it.”

So I cleared it with Isaac and a few minutes later this edgy guy with a pony tail got up on stage with the band and launched into a couple of tunes delivered with a level of dynamism that was not usually experienced by the Pig’s patrons. And sure enough the guy did play some nice harp, in a kind of souped-up style. Afterwards, Mr. Energy and his entourage said some hasty thank yous and disappeared into the Seattle night.

The next day I attended a blues festival held in Sicks’ Stadium, Seattle’s old minor-league ballpark. It was an unreal lineup of acts, including Howlin’Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, and Margie Evans. Early in the show the emcee announces “Please welcome, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Aces, Straights, and Shuffles featuring the great Kim Wilson,” and out comes a band fronted by the pony-tailed guy from the Pig. They did a powerful set, and I filed away the name “Kim Wilson” in the memory banks.

Flash forward to two years later. After spending time in Memphis, New Orleans, and Lafayette, Louisiana, I finally ran out of money in Austin, Texas. (I think I had subconsciously planned it that way.) I scored a day job and a cheap apartment and went looking for the music. I asked some people I had met what there was in town in terms of blues, and they recommended that I check out this young guitarist who had just put together his first band—Stevie Ray Vaughan. I checked out Stevie with the Triple Threat Review (Stevie, W.C. Clark, and Lou Ann Barton) at the Rome Inn. During the break I followed Stevie, introduced myself as a harp player from Seattle, and asked about sitting in.

"A harp player, huh?" he said. "Do you know Kim Wilson from the Fabulous Thunderbirds?"

I told Stevie that I had been hearing about the T-Birds on the blues grapevine, that I didn’t know that Kim was their harp player, but that I had met and heard Kim a couple of years before in Seattle. Stevie asked me what I thought of Kim's playing. I told him that he was really good but maybe a little busy, or words to that effect. Stevie gave me a confounded look. Then, as if I was a character in an improbable scene in a cheesey movie, Kim Wilson, just returned from the T-Birds first tour of the Northeast, walked through the door a few minutes later.

So it was Kim and not me who sat in that night. Kim pulled out a chromatic and threw out an insanely huge harp sound on George Smith's "Juicy Harmonica" instrumental. After that ear-opening triumph, he leaned back and launched into the incredible vocal intro to 'Otis Rush' "I Can't Quit You Baby." At some point I slipped quietly out the side door.

I got to know Kim pretty well during my time in Austin, and he inspired me to really put time into my own harp playing in those days. Since then I see him when I can. Over the  years I’ve had the thrill of seeing Kim play with Muddy Waters; trade licks with Walter Horton; and catch him on tour with the T-Birds, his blues-only bands, and with an Antone’s West junket that included Buddy Guy, Luther Tucker, and Jimmy Rogers.

Kim has a monster work ethic, impeccable taste, and unsurpassed chops as both a singer and a harp player. I can testify to the fact that the legendary blues performers are among his biggest fans. I recently spent time in Chicago with Billy Boy Arnold, who got harmonica lessons as a twelve year old from John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson and who has heard every harp player since. Here’s what he had to say about Kim Wilson: “There are lots of dynamite harp players. Kim has everything Little Walter had but he’s Kim. He’s got his own thing. Kim can play all night without repeating himself, and that’s what makes Kim the top man.”

Turns out that guy from Ada Records back in 1975 was dead right after all.

(Click here to read my profile of, and interview with, Kim Wilson from my book, “Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers.”)

DeFord Bailey (1899-1982)

One gray afternoon in November, 1977, I parked my car at a street corner on Edgehill Road in a black neighborhood in Nashville. The man I was looking for had managed a shoeshine stand on that corner as recently as six years before, but now there was no sign of it. I walked into a nearby drugstore that had obviously been there for years and asked the pharmacist behind the counter if he might know where I could find DeFord Bailey. He obligingly pointed out a high-rise apartment building across the street.

I walked into a lobby furnished with chairs filled with old men and women reading newspapers and conversing quietly and found Bailey’s name and apartment number listed in a tenant directory on the wall. A few minutes later, I was knocking on the door of number 30, which swung open to reveal a tiny, white-haired black man, impeccably turned out in a white brocaded shirt, sharply creased pants, and gleaming patent-leather shoes. I stammered out an introduction and, stretching the truth only a little, said that I was a harmonica player who had traveled across the country just to meet the man who had recorded “Ice Water Blues.” Smiling, Bailey welcomed me in a quiet voice, stepped aside, and ushered me into his apartment, a small place filled with photographs and train memorabilia in which time seemed suspended sometime between the world wars.

We talked about his songs and DeFord produced a tape recorder containing a cassette of his old recordings. I had heard that Bailey would play his harmonica only on a cash basis, so I placed a twenty-dollar bill on a nearby side table as discreetly as I could and told him how much it would mean to me to hear the sound of his mouth organ in person.

“I play the banjo, you know,” he responded, and produced a five-string from somewhere and began fingerpicking it left-handed. After a time I steered the conversation back to the harmonica again.

“I play the guitar, too,” he volunteered, and in a minute he was cradling a guitar and picking out a melody in a subdued, tuneful style reminiscent of Mississippi John Hurt’s.

I decided to force the issue by pulling out a Marine Band and attempting my own version of my host’s “Ice Water Blues.” I stewed in my embarrassment as he pondered my playing. “You got some of that in there pretty good,” he finally said. “Keep practicing, son—keep practicing. I’ve been playing the harmonica for seventy-five years. You know I must know something.”

Bailey carefully opened a box containing a Marine Band in the key of G, confiding that the A and the G models were the best for his songs but that he could get by with a Bb if he had to. He cradled the harmonica in his right hand, brought it to his mouth, and for the next few minutes his remarkable playing filled the small room.

We listened to the tape of Bailey’s old recordings and discussed the finer technical points of harmonica playing. After a lesson from DeFord on how to play the bones properly, I asked him if I could have a picture taken with him. He agreed, but saying that he would like to change his clothes, he politely excused himself and disappeared behind a curtain that divided the single room into a parlor and a bedroom. A few minutes later he reappeared, this time in a black frock coat, string tie, and a Stetson hat that looked as if it were enjoying its first trip out of the box. He posed with me, we shook hands, I tried to tell him what his records meant to me, and then I was walking down a stairwell, trying to imagine Bailey as a young man in the WSM studios, perched on a Coca-Cola crate in front of a microphone, harmonica in hand, waiting for George Hay’s introduction.

At the close of the NBC “Music Appreciation Hour” on the night of December 11, 1927, host Walter Damrosch commented stiffly that “while most artists realize that there is no place in the classics for realism, I am going to break one of my rules and present a composition by a young composer from Iowa. This young man has sent us his latest number, which depicts the onrush of a locomotive.”

After the stirring orchestral train imitation was finished, those listening to the network broadcast over Nashville’s WSM heard George Hay follow Damrosch’s lead. Promising his audience “nothing but realism, down-to-earth for the earthy,” he called on DeFord Bailey, “The Harmonica Wizard,” to perform his train piece, “Pan American Blues.” After Bailey’s artificial steam had dissipated, Hay reminded listeners that “for the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from the Grand Opera, but from now on we will present the Grand Ole Opry.”

DeFord Bailey, despite his undeniable genius, was an unlikely candidate to become the most popular of the many fine  harmonica players in the early days of country music. He was a quiet man, a tiny hunchback barely four feet ten inches tall. And he was black.

Bailey was born on his parents’ farm near Bellwood, Tennessee. “Everybody in my family played music,” he told Bengt Olsson. His mother and his aunt both played the guitar, his brother was a banjoist, and his father and grandfather were fine fiddlers. Bailey claimed that one of his uncles was the best black banjoist he had ever heard. Two of DeFord’s uncles played the harmonica; one, Albert, had quite a local reputation. DeFord remembered his family as being known as “the best musicians since slavery times.”

Bailey’s physical shortcomings were the result of a bout with polio at the age of three. Bedridden for a year, he spent his convalescence trying to unravel the mysteries of the harmonica and mandolin. “I tried to learn more about my harp from other people when I was a boy,” Bailey told David Morton, “but I didn’t learn very much…I was in a different class.” Bailey told me that as a child he was so obsessed with perfecting a train imitation that he would spend whole days sitting under a nearby railroad trestle, studying the shuddering roar of passing locomotives. He later became justly famous for his harmonica train pieces, which were so accurate that a railroad engineer once visited WSM studios for the express purpose of congratulating the mouth organist on his achievement and to suggest a few subtle corrections to DeFord’s whistle pattern for crossings.

Bailey’s physical problems, the racial climate of his day, and his talent for music all helped to give him an introverted, dreamy character. “I’ve always been like a child,” he told Bengt Olsson. “I have a very vivid imagination. I think like a child and I feel like a child. People say I drive them crazy after a while.” Bailey confided to David Morton that his schooling was sketchy. “I didn’t study nothing else but my harp.” When the white family for whom he did chores moved to Nashville in 1918, DeFord went with them.

His solitary personality notwithstanding, Bailey sought the musical spotlight. Preposterously, he teamed up with mirror image of himself—another diminutive, crippled African American harmonica player named Bob Lee—and together they played around Nashville. Bailey also worked as an elevator operator, playing his harmonica between stops for passengers, one of whom encouraged him to make his first radio appearance as a contestant in a contest sponsored by WDAD. A description of the competition in the Nashville Tennessean reported that “the first prize in the French Harp contest was one by J. T. Bland who played ‘Lost John.’ The second prize was won by DeFord Bailey, a negro boy, who played “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’.”

Dr. Humphrey Bate brought Bailey to an Opry broadcast, introducing him to Hay as “the dangdest harmonica player who ever lived” and convincing the announcer to put DeFord on the air that same night. Bailey was made an Opry regular in 1926 and within a year became the most popular member of its cast with his own regular fifteen-minute segment.

There is no hard evidence that the Opry tried to keep DeFord’s race a secret from the Opry audience. Bailey rarely spoke during his broadcasts, but this may have been in keeping with DeFord’s essentially shy nature, and he did sing occasionally on the air. While Bailey was the only black regular on the Opry, other African American gospel singers, guitarists, and blues performers appeared on the program. Whatever notions the Opry audience had about DeFord’s background, they responded enthusiastically to his performances; his fan mail was sizeable. According to Charles Wolfe, “it wasn’t at all uncommon for DeFord to appear for two or even three sets in a single Saturday night show.” Opry scholar Richard Petersen has documented that in 1928 Bailey performed almost twice as often on the Opry as any other performer.

In 1927, Bailey traveled to Atlanta and cut two sides for Columbia that were never issued. Two weeks later, Bailey was on a train for New York, where he recorded eight tunes in two sessions for the Brunswick label. On October 2, 1928, Bailey was the focus of the first recording session held in Nashville, during which he cut eight sides for Victor.

At the time, record companies had a practice of issuing blues recordings—then aimed solely at black audiences—as “race” records; recordings of white country music performers were sold as “hillbilly” discs. Bailey’s race, his status as a star of the Grand Ole Opry, and the fact that his purely instrumental music reflected the overlapping musical repertoires of blacks and whites in the Tennessee hill country (Bailey himself always contended that he played “black hillbilly music”) enabled Victor to release his recordings in both series. DeFord Bailey had become the first crossover star in country music.

As Paul Oliver’s research has shown, the material that Bailey recorded was not especially original. “Old Hen Cackle” was a traditional fiddle tune, “John Henry” was a well-known favorite of both blacks and whites, “Ice Water Blues” was based on a tune called “The Preacher and the Bear,” and “Davidson County Blues” was a rewriting of the piano showcase “Cow Cow Blues.” Bailey’s recordings, however, do not reveal the full extent of his range, which included blues, pop, sacred, and jazz numbers as well as traditional tunes.

What they do give us is solid evidence of his genius. His tone is unfailingly beautiful and astonishingly full, and his numbers are strongly melodic and cleverly conceived. What puts Bailey squarely in the ranks of the greatest of harmonica players is his polyrhythmic brilliance, which has never been equaled. In tunes like “Ice Water Blues” (a popular record that was released three times), Bailey effortlessly juxtaposes a melody line against two or three rhythmically distinct cadences that somehow dovetail seamlessly. Bailey once tried to describe to David Morton what distinguished his style from that of other players: “My timing is different from theirs….I got a double sound. I can’t play single. It doesn’t sound good to me….I add time to vacant space.” He took great pride in the clarity of his playing, and he liked to inject something unique (he called it “throwing in a little judo”) into each of his pieces.

Bailey often headlined touring package shows featuring Opry stars that drew large audiences. “When I first came to town, he was one of the top stars and was much in demand for personal appearances,” Roy Acuff admitted. “I carried him on my band. I wasn’t known and he drew a crowd….He helped me get where I am.”

“Rabon and I used DeFord on a lot of our personal appearances,” wrote Alton Delmore of the Delmore Brothers. “[He] was a pioneer in the field of playing the harmonica. When we joined the Opry we saw a lot of DeFord and he was a real friendly fellow and we liked him very much. So did the rest of the entertainers on the Opry….We all thought just as much of DeFord as we did our white friends. He was a little fellow who commanded our admiration and respect.”

On the road, Bailey was no longer sheltered by the faceless anonymity offered by radio. He usually could not eat at the same restaurants as his Opry colleagues. Although he suffered some indignities at the hands of his fellow performers on these road trips (on one tour DeFord was wheeled onstage at each performance in an oversize baby buggy), many of them were particularly solicitous of his welfare. When he toured with Uncle Dave Macon, Macon would often claim that Bailey was his valet so that the harmonicist could room with him. Most of the time, however, Bailey had to scour black neighborhoods in each town for lodging. As Bill Monroe told Jim Rooney, “We’d walk the streets together, two, three o-clock in the morning, nobody out, in the roughest parts of town we’d be down there getting him a place to stay….Then he would get in the room and lock the door and stay there until I went to get him the next day .” Bailey slept with a pistol under his head while on these tours.

A trend toward modernization at the Opry led to the steady reduction of Bailey’s airtime, which by 1935 had shrunk to five minutes. By the early 1940s he was called on to play only if time permitted. Bailey’s close friend David Morton feels that Bailey was the victim of a publishing battle between ASCAP, which published most of his repertoire, and BMI. WSM had invested in BMI and pressured its cast of regulars to write new songs that would be published in the BMI catalog.

Bailey was finally given his notice by Hay in 1941. In a souvenir pamphlet published four years later, Hay commented on the end of Bailey’s Opry career: “That brings us to DeFord Bailey, a little crippled colored boy who was a bright feature of our show for about fifteen years. Like some members of his race and other races DeFord was lazy. He knew about a dozen numbers, which he put on the air and recorded for a major company, but he refused to learn more, even though his reward was great. He was our mascot and is still loved by the entire company. We gave him a whole year’s notice to learn some new tunes. But he would not. When we were forced to give him his final notice, DeFord said, without mailice: “I knowed it wuz comin’, Judge, I knowed it wuz comin’.” Bailey himself, however, was steadfastly bitter about his firing, claiming that he never got paid more than five dollars for an Opry performance and that his treatment had not been on a par with that received by other performers.

Bailey had stared a shoeshine parlor with an uncle in 1931, and he went to work there after leaving the Opry. When his parlor became a casualty of a 1971 urban renewal program, he moved into a nearby housing project for the elderly. He steadfastly resisted offers from the Newport Folk Festival, for album projects alone and with folksinger Pete Seeger, for network television appearances, and for a cameo appearance in the Burt Reynolds film W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings. When the Opry called, however, Bailey still answered; he stole the show at an Old Timer’s Night at the old Ryman Auditorium in 1974 and played at the new Opryland complex on his seventy-fifth birthday. He would occasionally talk about recording again, but never did.

In 1982 Bailey spent several weeks in the cardiac care unit of Nashville’s Baptist Hospital for treatment of heart disease. Shortly after his release, on July 2, Bailey was rushed to the hospital’s emergency room, where he was pronounced dead on arrival from kidney failure and heart congestion.

The Hohner Company formally petitioned the Country Music Hall of Fame to induct Bailey. Minnie Pearl and Alcyone Beasley, Humphrey Bates’ daughter, urged his selection, but Roy Acuff told the New York Times that Bailey did not deserve a place in the Hall of Fame, saying that the harmonica player’s contributions had done nothing to further country music.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Daniel Morton, June 23, 1983 was declared DeFord Bailey Day in Nashville. A striking granite headstone, engraved with a diatonic harmonica and the words “Harmonica Wizard,” was unveiled in a ceremony at Nashville’s Greenwood Cemetery. Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, and Herman Crook were among the crowd. Acuff was still smarting from the criticism he had received over his comments concerning Bailey’s qualifications for the Country Music Hall of Fame. “If his name is ever put on the ballot,” he told reporters, “he will have a vote from Roy Acuff.”

Bailey would have enjoyed the occasion. The Crook Brothers played two of his favorite breakdowns, “Sugar in the Gourd” and “Grey Eagle.” Bill Monroe performed Bailey’s “Evening Prayer Blues” on the mandolin, and James Talley contributed a version of “John Henry.” After the headstone was unveiled, Herman Crook brought the observance to a close with a solo harmonica rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Some of those in attendance then drove to the Country Music Hall of Fame, where several Bailey artifacts—three hats, some shoes, a folding can chair, and two of his megaphones—were donated to the Country Music Museum.

DeFord Bailey was finally inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

The previous is an excerpt from my book, “Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers.”

R.I.P. Jody Williams (1935-2018)

There’s nothing like that phase when you’re falling deep into a musical style and learning the musical vocabulary and soaking up all the details you can find about the amazing players that you’re discovering on an almost daily basis. One thing leads to another—you get into Muddy Waters and that leads you to Buddy Guy and then you’re finding out about Junior Wells and pretty soon you’re having to hear more records by this Earl Hooker guy.

That’s how I ended up with a vinyl copy of “The Leading Brand” on Red Lightnin’ Records. I bought it because half of the album was made up of singles by Earl Hooker. The rest were recordings from the ‘50s and early ‘60s by Jody Williams, a Chicago blues musician who I had never heard of. I have played the hell out of “The Leading Brand” ever since, and while it certainly added to my appreciation for the genius of Earl Hooker, it was the spectacular work of Jody Williams that really stuck with me.

Jody Williams’ shimmering guitar tone and solid singing would have been enough, but it was the quality of his original songs that made him truly special. These weren’t blues jams or show-off pieces, but carefully constructed tunes that were far more sophisticated than most of the work by Williams’ contemporaries. Jazz chords, unusual changes, totally unique riffs, latin rhythms, hip melodies—there were lots of glorious surprises when you listened to Jody Williams.

As I dug deeper about him, Jody Williams seemed to show up everywhere. He had started out playing the harmonica as a boy in Chicago. What he learned on that instrument, tellingly, was not the blues harp style but the pop instrumental hits of the Chicago-based Harmonicats. When Williams was 16 he met Bo Diddley at a talent show and, inspired, bought a guitar. Bo showed him how to tune it to open E major, and Williams quickly developed a style heavily influenced by his idols T Bone Walker and BB King.

Five years after he first held a guitar, Williams was playing in Howlin’ Wolf’s band. He toured with Bo Diddley and did club dates with Memphis Slim. Throughout the following decade, Williams was a sought-after session player. The killer lead guitar on Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love,” Sonny Boy Williamson’s classic “Don’t Start Me Talkin’,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “Evil Is Going On,” and on Billy Boy Arnold’s hit “I Wish You Would”? Jody Williams. He also recorded with, among others, Jimmy Rogers, Otis Rush, Otis Spann, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bobby Charles, and Willie Dixon. As Bill Dahl has said, Williams is the string-bending link between T Bone Walker and BB King and Buddy Guy and Otis Rush.

But professional frustrations (there was a protracted lawsuit with Mickey Baker over the authorship of the monster hit “Love Is Strange,” which Williams claimed was stolen from him), a growing family, and some training in electronics gained during a stint in the Army convinced Jody Williams to quit music. The liner notes for “The Leading Brand” ended with this plaintive coda:

“We must savour these recordings because it is unlikely that Jody will consent to cut another disc again, but we can only live in the hope that this distinctive and exciting guitarist will relent and give the world another taste of his amazing talent.”

For the next twenty-five years, that was it in terms of news about Jody Williams. Then in 2001 came the miraculous news of a new Jody Williams CD on Evidence, “Return of a Legend.” The years of pleading by fans and friends like Michael James, Dick Shurman, Scott Dirks, Steve Cushing, and Randy Chortkoff had finally paid off. Williams had retired from his job of nearly thirty years as an engineer for Xerox and, after a lot of deliberation, had decided to pick up his Gibson 345 again and to do some gigs. Williams picked right up where he had left off with “Return of a Legend,” which featured new versions of some of his classic tunes, eight new original songs, and guest appearances by Tinsley Ellis, Sean Costello, and Rusty Zinn, three guitarists heavily influenced by Williams.

Dick Shurman brought Jody Williams to the Pacific Northwest after the new CD came out, and I caught two of those shows. It was a real thrill to finally see him in action. “I put that guitar under my bed and never even looked at it for thirty years,” he told me between sets. He seemed surprised and genuinely moved by the adulation of a new generation of blues fans. Jody Williams’ comeback included another CD, featured spots in the top blues festivals, tours of Europe, and inductions into the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis and the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame.

I did a gig Saturday at the Rockfish Café in Anacortes, Washington, a venue where I saw Jody Williams play in 2002. I noticed that the club had hung his autographed portrait on the wall by the entrance. Jody Williams had died earlier that day in a nursing home in Indiana, but I wouldn’t know that until Sunday.

Even amongst the legion of Chicago blues geniuses—creative giants who all admired and respected him—Jody Williams stood out for his stunning, unique musicianship. We are so lucky and privileged to be able to continue to savor his wonderful creations.

The Search for Speedy's Steel

I got a text yesterday from my friend Jon Hyde. We share a passion for the pedal steel guitar. Jon actually plays one, which I’m not smart enough, adept enough, or crazy enough to even attempt.

If a text could be breathless, Jon’s was.

Speedy West’s original pedal steel has been found.

Speedy West’s original pedal steel has been restored.

Speedy West’s original pedal steel is going to be displayed and played tonight at a steel guitar get-together at a private home near Portland.

Let me back up, in case the pedal steel guitar is foreign to you.

First there was the guitar, perfected in Spain. Then there was the Hawaiian guitar, an instrument developed in the islands that was tuned to a major chord and played on the lap with a piece of pipe or metal. (There was a huge Hawaiian music craze in the States in the early 20th. Black musicians took the Hawaiian approach and created the bottleneck blues style.) Then there was the lap steel guitar, a metal-body instrument that was amplified and played in the lap or on a stand. Then came the console steel, which answered the need to play steel guitar in several keys; it was a massive instrument on a stand that boasted with two or three necks offering different tunings. The pedal steel guitar was the next advancement. It offered pedals added to the console steel so that the player could change tunings without changing necks. Later the pedals were used to change the tuning of specific strings, and then—why not?—knee levers were added as well.

The only instrument designed, built and played by people dismissed by many as unwashed hillbillies turns out to be an insanely sophisticated and complex instrument that asks the player to master finger picks, a metal bar, at least four foot pedals, two knee levers, and, usually, multiple necks in different tunings. It’s totally unique, crying sound has become synonymous with country music. Dave Harmonson,  a friend who is a great steel player, calls it “the sad machine.”

Let me back up again, in case Speedy West is a new name to you.

Speedy West is revered and worshiped by pedal steel fans because he was the original badass wildman on that infernal instrument. Starting with his ear-opening work on Tennessee Ernie Ford and Kay Starr’s huge 1950 hit, “I’ll Never Be Free”—the first of Speedy’s unique, what-the-hell-was-that solos—West spent the next five years playing on over 6,000 recordings, backing up top artists like Doris Day, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Very few of those recordings have legs today, but the dozens of Capitol sides that West recorded with electric guitarist Jimmy Bryant between 1951 and 1956 are still mesmerizing guitarists and music fans the world over. Bryant and West were the fastest pickers ever on their chosen instruments. (They didn’t call him “Speedy” for nothing—check out “Caffeine Patrol.”) Their unison playing of bebop-inspired riffs at insanely fast tempos still seems technically impossible, and the duo relentlessly challenged each other to come up with new and ever wilder sonic effects in the studio. These guys were brilliant AND crazy. No one has ever topped Speedy West for getting space-age, dazzling sounds out of the pedal steel guitar.

Speedy’s classic recordings were done with a four-pedal model made by Paul Bigsby, an instrument maker based in Los Angeles, in February of 1948. It’s considered to be the first “modern” pedal steel in that the console, legs, pedal rack, and connection rods were designed to be disassembled at the end of a gig and packed into a case. Before this critical innovation, pedal steels were nearly as cumbersome as pianos. Speedy switched to a Fender pedal steel in 1956 and sold his Bigsby. Ever since, the pedal steel subculture has been occasionally inflamed by rumors of sightings of West’s Bigsby instrument, but none turned out to be true.

Which brings me back to Jon Hyde’s text message, which included the phone number of Bob Muller, the host for the unveiling of the Holy Grail of pedal steels being held at his house that very evening. I called Bob and asked whether he’d allow a non-playing interloper into his event, and he gave me his address and told me to stop by.

I pulled up to Bob’s house in a new subdivision in a Portland suburb a little after the advertised starting time of 6 p.m. There were a slew of cars parked in Bob’s cul de sac. His gracious wife greeted me at the door and told me to head upstairs. I walked into a music room, complete with a sound system and a small stage, that was packed with people trying to make room for themselves amongst Bob’s seventeen personal pedal steels and several spectacular jukeboxes.

Bob Muller’s music room

The guest of honor was Deke Dickerson, the owner of Speedy West’s original pedal steel. Deke is an ace rockabilly and country guitarist and singer from California who is also a passionate collector of instruments and a prolific music writer and historian. (Save some for us mere mortals, Deke!)

Deke Dickerson

Deke took up a microphone and kicked off the evening by telling the remarkable story of how he came to own Speedy’s steel. After West sold the instrument, it ended up in the hands of a Bakersfield steel player who made some ill-advised modifications to it. The new owner was fond of drink and also seems to have been spectacularly lazy, because for years he refrained from unpacking and packing Speedy’s rig and just kept it, fully assembled, in the open bed of his pickup truck. Naturally, at some point the instrument was stolen.

Deke then flashed us forward to many years later and the Bakersfield office of Buck Owens, who had opened his own museum full of instruments that he had collected. Someone walked in one day and let Buck know that there was a pedal steel guitar just sitting in a nearby trash heap. Buck and a friend eventually checked into it and rescued the pedal steel. It was in no shape to be displayed—it looked like it had been out in the weather for years. Buck later loaned the steel and many other instruments to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

Deke entered the picture a few years ago. On a tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame collection, he was shown the beat-up old pedal steel they had gotten from Buck Owens. Dickerson got excited. His trained eye had told him that this wreck might be something very special. He asked the folks at the Hall of Fame to dig out a photo of Speedy West playing his original Bigsby steel. The wood pattern and other details of the trash-heap instrument matched the photo. Deke had found the Holy Grail of lost pedal steels.

Deke owned a nice guitar that had once belonged to Don Rich, Buck Owens’ longtime guitarist, and it only took a brief email exchange with Jim Shaw, Buck’s office manager, to arrange a trade of that guitar for the old pedal steel at the Hall of Fame. Now Deke owned the Holy Grail.

Dickerson’s next move was to contact Todd Clinesmith, an excellent musician and famous maker of steel and resonator guitars based in western Oregon who is an expert on vintage instruments. (Check out his web site at https://www.clinesmithinstruments.com/.) Clinesmith agreed to take on the effort to restore Speedy’s neglected steel to something like its original glory. He spent the next year and a half on the project, much of that looking for spare parts or making his own when they couldn’t be found.

Todd Clinesmith

And so there, standing smack in the middle of the small stage in Bob Muller’s music room, was Clinesmith’s resurrection of Speedy West’s 1948 Bigsby Pedal steel, in all its birds-eye-maple glory, down to the gorgeous reproduction of the famous custom façade with Speedy’s name and the plaque that Paul Bigsby had included on the original guitar to identify his handiwork.

The whole idea of the evening at Bob Muller’s was Deke Dickerson’s desire to give the members of the relatively large pedal steel community in western Oregon the chance to not only see the restored West steel, but to play it. Some of the local steel players who had gathered to pay homage to Speedy’s steel demurred, since the instrument had also restored West’s unique personal tunings, rendering it almost incomprehensible to musicians used to the standard steel tunings. But several steelers took their turn behind Speedy’s three fabled necks, accompanied by a snare drummer, a standup bassist, guitarist Russ Blake, a fiddle player, and Dickerson on acoustic rhythm guitar.

Todd Clinesmith was one of the first to give the steel a whirl. He was followed by Jeremy Wakefield, one of the most talented steel players in the country. He and Russ Blake did a good job of giving us a taste of the unison playing of Speedy and Jimmy Bryant and demonstrating some of the wild sound effects that the rig could generate. They also backed up Dickerson and Mary Rondthaler as they recreated the musical partnership between West, Ernie Ford, and Kay Starr on “I’ll Never Be Free.”

They were succeeded by 84-year-old Dale Granstrom, a local legend who has been playing professional in local bars and clubs for seventy years and who still works regularly. Dale and his peer, guitarist Keith Holter, told stories about driving down to California in 1951 to meet Paul Bigsby and to see Speedy West do his magic in a club. Dickerson owns a myrtlewood Mosrite guitar that Granstrom built in the mid-1950s, and he talked to us about Dale’s beautiful craftsmanship. “When you don’t have much money, you build your own stuff,” Granstrom explained matter-of-factly. Host Bob Muller and Russ Blake also stepped up to play a tune apiece on the shining Bigsby.

At around 9:30, after all the players who wanted to had taken Speedy’s steel for a spin, and after all the requisite group photos and shots of the steel players and Speedy West fans next to Klinesmith’s gorgeous restoration had been secured on cell phones, the crowd began to break up. I thanked Deke Dickerson and Bob Muller and drove back to Portland to the sound of “Stratosphere Boogie,” Razor & Tie’s CD compilation of the best work of Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant. Their unique technical brilliance with an equal measure of inspired madness, preserved for us forever. It’s one of the great, happy mysteries how two musicians so obviously made for each other managed to connect in this big wide world.

Here’s to the pedal steel players. They’re all crazy, bless ‘em.

Thanks to Deke Dickerson for sharing Speedy’s steel and for his help with the details on this post.

The End of Highway 99

The Highway 99 Blues Club, Seattle’s top blues and r&b venue for many years, is closing up for good—New Year’s Eve will be the last night for music in the fabled room there on the Seattle waterfront.

The music business is full of comings and goings, but this is tough news. When a music venue shuts its doors, that’s a bad thing. When a blues venue closes up shop, that’s a really bad thing—blues clubs are an endangered species. When one of the best blues venues on the West Coast packs it in, well, that’s a genuine tragedy.

When the Highway 99 opened, I was pretty much out of the music scene. I hadn’t had a band in years, and the unsolicited calls from other musicians and from venues to get out and play had become few and far between. I had other, more important priorities during that time, but I was creatively frustrated and really feeling the urge to make a comeback. But I wanted to resurface with a genuinely great blues band, made up of younger players I had never worked with before, that delivered an entertaining, tight show and played original material. That seemed like a very tall order, but that’s when the Highway 99 showed me the way.

In May of 2006 the Highway 99 hosted a medical-expenses benefit for Curtis Salgado. Lots of great players, most of whom I had known for years, showed up to play and show their support. When I got up to do a couple of numbers, two young guitarists who I only vaguely knew, Eric Daw and Steve Yonck, were set up behind me. As we started playing, I found myself listening to them—how they quickly found complimentary parts, how great they were playing, and how they each had different but totally legitimate blues guitar sounds.

A week later I had built a band around Eric and Steve—the first incarnation of the Mighty Titans of Tone. We pulled the band together by playing a regular weeknight gig at the Highway 99 for a couple of months, and then the club gave us the opportunity to headline on the weekends. We established ourselves at the Highway 99 and even recorded a live album there.

Five years later, I realized another major bucket-list goal of mine—being in a topflight country and western band. The phenomenal singer and guitarist Lisa Theo had come to me with an offer I couldn't refuse—to join her in a band that she was putting together that would pay tribute to the great male/female country music duet singing tradition. We branded ourselves the Titans of Twang. Once again I approached the Highway 99, and they got behind us. We did our first gigs there and then were off to the races for a very successful two-year run.

For the past several years the Highway 99 has let me host my Big Blue Revue shows there two or three times a year. These have featured the Mighty Titans of Tone, the Emerald City horns, and a parade of world-class guest artists, and they have been some of the most fun shows that I’ve ever been a part of. I’ve also had the thrill to have been invited to share the Highway 99 stage with a slew of great artists, including Magic Dick, Lee Oskar, Bob Corritore, and Rockin’ Johnny Burgin.

But what made the Highway 99 Blues Club a truly rare venue were its co-owners, Ed Maloney and Steve Sarkowsky, and their team. These guys genuinely love roots music, and they have worked their asses off to make the Highway 99 Blues Club at top national venue. They are known throughout the worldwide community of musicians for their passion, their professionalism, their integrity, their commitment to treating musicians as artists, their great employees, and for being a lot of fun to hang with. There is no way of telling how many lucky people have had their lives changed thanks to the Highway 99 Blues Club, but I can tell you that I am one of them.

Thank you for everything, Ed and Steve. Love you guys. If I can ever be of help to you, just ask. Hope to get the chance to work with you again down the road.

The Night Before

On election night 2016 I left my office on W. 26th Street in Manhattan early and headed to the Javits Center. America was about to elect its first woman President, and I wanted to call my Mom from the official Clinton victory party. After standing in line for nearly two hours I realized that I wasn’t going to get into the building, so I took the subway uptown back to my apartment. As I watched the stunned, tear-streaked faces in the Javits Center on television over the next few hours, I thanked god that I was not trapped in that vast funeral parlor.

My oldest son had decided that summer to try to become an FBI agent. He had done all the interviews, taken the exams, solicited letters of recommendation, and completed his physical. At about 1 a.m., just when I had decided that I couldn’t possibly watch the election horror show for another second, I got a text from him: “The FBI offered me a job today.”

I called him and asked him what he was going to do. “I can’t take that job,” he said. “That would be like joining Trump’s Gestapo.” I told him to sleep on it—that maybe the FBI would need men like him more than ever over the next few years. He turned them down a few days later, and I was never so proud of him. I often think of him when I consider what Trump has done to the FBI in the interim.

These past two years leading up to tomorrow’s voting have seemed like an eternity. But we haven’t sat idly by. We started demonstrating—the worldwide Women’s March, which took place on Trump’s first day in office, was the largest political protest in history. We began organizing and launched 1,500 resistance groups based on the Indivisible model all across the country. Thousands of us, mostly women, decided to run for office. We began registering people to vote. We put such constant pressure on Republicans in Congress that forty of them were convinced to retire without a fight. We won some key interim elections, including a Senate seat from Alabama (!), thanks primarily to the votes of women. We waited patiently for Robert Mueller to gather his evidence and issue his findings and his indictments while we chafed at his silence and feared for his professional life. We didn’t resort to violence.

The Trumpists, on the other hand, have moved even more quickly than we feared they would. Immigrants from specific countries—countries that had done us no harm—were banned from America. Trump called racist murderers in Charlottesville “good people.” The FBI and the Justice Department were politicized. Immigrant families were ripped apart and concentration camps were built—and quickly filled—on the southern border. Trump stood before the world and said that the word of the two-bit dictator of Russia was more credible than all the U.S. intelligence agencies. One trillion dollars was added to the deficit overnight to give the ultra-rich a massive tax reduction. Congressional districts were gerrymandered in favor of the GOP and hundreds of conservative judges were appointed to the bench—there is no mystery about how the Republicans plan on continuing their tyranny of the minority. Republican-led state governments began planning months ago to suppress voting by minorities and young people tomorrow. The GOP came within one vote of repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. Foreign allies were abandoned and insulted while our government cozied up to murderers and tyrants. A man accused of sexual assault was given a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court after a phony investigation. Trump’s closing arguments this month have been the most odious, reprehensible statements ever made by a President—pure, full-throated, hysterical, and impossibly crude stream of fear, naked racism and blatant lies. If the Democrats win, he shrieks at his rallies, “lock your windows and lock your doors.” Troops have been sent to the border to defend our country from brown women and children. “Barbed wire used properly can be a beautiful sight,” says the President of the United States of America.

Tomorrow we may get more than a glimpse of our country’s future. Will Trump go down in as the greatest progressive organizer since FDR, or will the shadow of his Yankee Doodle brand of fascism be the introduction to a deeper darkness?

It is the struggle of our generation, and the ballots that will be counted tomorrow represent the first, and the most important, test of the resistance. Most likely we will suffer some heartbreaking losses and some truly inspirational triumphs. But I believe that, despite the trauma of 2016 and thanks to the efforts of millions of Americans, Trumpism—for Trump is just the mouthpiece of a vast national madness—will be less powerful on Wednesday than it is tonight.

That will be real progress and cause for celebration, but it won’t be the end of it. Far from it, because Trumpism does not respect voting, the electoral process, the will of the people, or the resolve of its opponents. When asked today how he felt about the prospect of losing the House of Representatives, Trump was blunt:

 “I don’t care. They can do whatever they want and I can do whatever I want.”

 That’s not going to work.



Father's Day

The first Father's Day without you. The absence is felt every day, but there are no regrets because we made sure that there were no mysteries or questions about the love we had for each other. Just another thing you did for me. You landed at Omaha Beach in '44 to ensure that we never had to face fascism here at home, but you lived to see that happen. You weren't granted your last wish--to live long enough to vote Trump out of office--but, thanks to you, we know what we have to do. Miss you.

Happy birthday to Isaac Scott, a Big Time Bluesman if there ever was one.

Isaac owned the Seattle blues scene for several decades. He didn’t like to travel and he never had the management to acquire an international reputation, but he certainly had all the musical prerequisites necessary to make it big. Isaac taught himself piano and the guitar as a boy and by the time he was in his early twenties he was touring with the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. He left that experience as the owner of a surpassingly gorgeous, church-infused voice. It was passion for the guitar playing of Albert Collins that drew him closer and closer to the blues. Collins was based in California in the 1970s and played Seattle often, and he and Isaac became thick as thieves. Isaac adopted Collins’ technique of relying solely on an insanely heavy thumb—no picks or other digits for those two guys. Isaac was always searching for new sounds, so he related to Jimi Hendrix right away. At any rate, Isaac’s gospel vocal style and his rocket-propelled approach to the guitar made him an absolutely unique kind of blues musician.

I met Isaac through drummer Twist Turner, who was playing with Scott at the time, in 1975 and joined his band for the next couple of years. In those days were only two clubs in Seattle that regularly booked blues bands—the Boulder Lounge on First Avenue, and the Place Pigalle (“Pig Alley”) right around the corner in the back of the Pike Place Market. Pig Alley was a classic waterfront dive favored by an eclectic clientele that included local degenerates, sailors on shore leave, aging beatniks, and young hipsters. Isaac had the house gig there. The Boulder was much more upscale with its padded black-and-red leather booths and go-go dancers in cages. Tom McFarland had the regular slot there.

Most of my memories of playing with Isaac revolve around Pig Alley. Isaac would often indulge himself in endless shuffles or slow blues workouts with acres of guitar solos. Isaac had copped Albert Collins’ 60-foot-guitar-cord trick and would often stroll through the club while he was playing. The Pig had a phone booth at the end of the bar, and Isaac would squeeze himself in there with his guitar (no small feat, as Isaac weighed about 300 pounds in those days). Once inside the booth, he would snap the door shut with his elbow and the light inside the booth would pop on, bathing him in a heavenly light from above.

Isaac was a very sweet guy by nature, but he could get hard core when the situation called for it. Once some young hippie “promoters” booked us on a Tuesday night at a local bar for surprisingly big money. Such surprisingly big money that we all grilled Isaac about whether this was a real gig or not. He assured us that he had made a solid deal. We played the entire night for about four people and the promoters didn’t show up until closing time at 1 a.m. They approached Isaac and asked him to step outside for a consultation. This didn’t look promising, and we watched through the windows as the two hippies huddled with Isaac on the sidewalk. Isaac listened to each man in turn as they obviously pleaded with him, gesturing nervously all the while. Isaac’s face became more solemn by the second, finally settling into a frightening scowl as he began to shake his head: "No, no, no…” One of the booking agents made what would prove be a final attempt to placate the big man; it was cut short by Isaac’s big right hand making contact with the side of his head. This initial victim instantly took the form of a crumpled heap on the sidewalk. Isaac turned toward the other promoter, who, in a desperate surge of adrenalin driven by fear of impending doom, bolted up Second Avenue. We all piled out onto the sidewalk just in time to watch Isaac, in a grisly, big-city version of a cheetah running down a defenseless gazelle on "Wild Kingdom," take off at an incredible velocity for a man of his size and make quick work of his second prey. But Isaac wasn’t done yet. He grabbed a hand truck out of the van, rolled it into the bar and proceeded to unplug the club’s expensive new jukebox from the wall, heave it onto the hand truck, and head for the door. He was stopped by the bar owner, and we got our money. Now THAT’S how a real band leader does it, people!

There were other memorable nights (like the time when Albert Collins pulled a knife on Isaac in the back room at a Pioneer Square club) and better venues (like a memorable opening slot at the San Francisco Blues Festival in Golden Gate Park), and I always enjoyed not only playing with Isaac but just being around him. He loved to play and he liked to have a good time. Unfortunately, even when I was in the band he was beginning to suffer from health issues that would take him from us far too early at the very young age of 56.

Isaac was justly famous for his six-string pyrotechnics, but my favorite recording of his is his brilliant and reworking of the Beatles’ tune “Help,” which I never get tired of because it shows off Isaac’s skill, his soulfulness, and his creativity. He probably had more musicality in his little finger than any other talent I’ve ever worked with. RIP, Isaac. None of us have forgotten.

Professor Longhair

There aren’t many things more enjoyable (or more rare) than stumbling on a music or a musician when you are in no way prepared for it—when you have no context or frame of reference for it--and having it or them carry you away.

When I was a college student in New York City in the ‘70s a club on the East Side of Manhattan sponsored a month-long blues piano festival. Each weekend a different lion of the blues piano was featured. At the first installment, I was able to sit ten feet from Little Brother Montgomery (an unassuming, pleasant looking guy who began his career playing in the turpentine camps and whorehouses of Louisiana and who made his first records in 1930) as he played his signature song, “Vicksburg Blues,” the tune of which later became “44 Blues” for Howlin’ Wolf. A week later I was there for a rollicking 90-minute set by the legendary Roosevelt Sykes, the Original Honeydripper, who was just as animated as Montgomery was shy. Sykes was a born entertainer, a monster on the piano, and a great singer who turned and faced and mugged for the audience when he played, a cigar jammed defiantly into the side of his mouth.

On the last weekend of the festival the headliner was a performer with a strange name who I had never heard of or listened to. I never thought about skipping that finale, as the rest of the festival had been so phenomenal, but I didn’t both to prepare for it by checking that unfamiliar player out.

When I got to the club the band was finishing setting up. It was an unusual trio—a Fender bass player, a conga player, and the featured piano player. He was a rail-thin man clad in denim who sported a large, gold front tooth, sunglasses, and longish hair capped by a wide-brimmed hat. I was just finishing my first drink when the group kicked into their show.

This was no blues trio. And this was no blues piano player, although there was a lot of that in there. These three guys were filling the room with some kind of unreal blend of New Orleans r&b, tango, barrelhouse blues, rhumba, and calypso. Whatever it was, I had never heard anything like it, and it was as exciting and funky as hell. After a few minutes of keyboard wizardry, the piano player leaned forward into the microphone and started whistling a slippery horn riff. Then he started singing about a some “big chief” in a wild, croaky kind of voice. Whoever this guy was, he was a trip and half!

This was the great Professor Longhair, aka Roy Byrd, from New Orleans, who once explained his approach this way: “You notice I never play anything straight. Anything I do I put a little pep in it, a little bounce—something to make you know that it’s not a love song.”

Professor Longhair would have turned 100 this year. This week I got a copy of “Fess Up,” a new booklet and DVD that celebrates the awesome uniqueness, talent, and wisdom of Professor Longhair. The context is a concert scheduled in 1980 in New Orleans that would feature three legendary piano players from that city: the elder statesman, Tuts Washington, his protégé, Professor Longhair, and Longhair’s student, Allen Toussaint. The concert never happened—Longhair died in his sleep two days before the show. But the promoters had the good sense to film the three pianists rehearsing for the show, which was later released as a television special called “Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together.” We learn a lot about each of the men in the film and get to observe the fascinating process by which they work together to figure out how to blend their different styles into a coherent musical program.

“Fess Up” includes a complete version of this film as well as a second DVD containing a 90-minute interview with Professor Longhair, clips of which were used in “Piano Players.” Longhair, who proves to be a savvy character and a humble person (“Those people who play sheet music, they think our stuff is crap”) who nonetheless understood how unique his music was, describes his musical beginnings, the music scene and the music business in postwar New Orleans, his brief period of retirement, and his eventual rediscovery and comeback. “Fess Up,” which comes in a handsome hard-cover booklet full of intriguing photographs and reminiscences of Longhair, is a fitting tribute to one of the great, had-to-be-seen-to-be-believed giants of American music.

Trump and my great grandparents

I can understand people feeling that they are powerless within the political system (although I don’t agree with them), but I don’t get it when people say that “politics has nothing to do with me.” Politics affects every aspect of everyone’s life and our national culture.

Today White House Advisor Stephen Miller took to the podium at a press briefing to unveil, in chilling fashion, a new immigration bill that the White House is sponsoring along with GOP Senators Cotton and Purdue.

Trump was elected on a openly rascist, xeonophobic, and profoundly un-American platform that included a blatantly false narrative that illegal immigrants were streaming into this country and committing mayhem against us. As late as two months ago, Trump stated that he had no desire to limit legal immigration.

The bill rolled out today has NOTHING to do with illegal immigration. Its goal is to cut LEGAL immigration in half. And if anyone has any doubt as to what half of the immigrant population will be cut out, Miller’s rewriting of Emma Lazarus’ poem that is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty (which he publicly scorned) leaves no doubt as to the Trumpists’ goal when it comes to immigration:

“Give me your skilled, your schooled
Your English-speaking people yearning to be free
From the wretched refuse back at home
Send only these, the privileged and familiar, to me
And I wiil douse my lamp beside the closing door!”

Politics is personal, and Trump’s is a vicious insult to me, my family, and our country.

The two gentlemen shown above are my maternal great-grandparents, Francois Lemoine and Charles Johnson. They both came to this country in the 1800s—from France and Sweden, respectively. Neither spoke English. Neither came to this country with money. Both became model citizens who made great contributions to—and sacrifices for—their new country.

Trump, Bannon, and Miller are using politics and the media every day to transform the United States from the country that welcomed my forebears (and yours) into a haven for rich white people. Their America is the kind of country in which the Justice Department attacks not crime but affirmative action, the NAACP issues a travel warning against the state of Missouri, the nominee as chief scientist of the USDA brands progressives as “race traitors,” Congressional districts are designed to ensure that minorities are not represented, and non-whites are systematically denied the right to vote.

That’s not the America that convinced my great grandfathers to pull up stakes and leave all that was familiar with no money, no advantage, and no language. This could not be more personal to me. My great grandfathers would expect nothing less from me than total resistance to this monstrously evil vision for the country that welcomed them and made room for them.

My great grandfathers Francis Lemoine and Charles Johnson

The Howlin' Wolf

Today is the birthday of Chester Burnett, the Howlin’ Wolf.

I was privileged to catch the Wolf many times. The Wolf had one of the most unique and amazing voices in all of music, but he was also an outstanding harmonica player. When I was twenty I saw the Wolf do a show on a Tuesday night at Sir Morgan’s Cove in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was a slim crowd, but the Wolf was in bigtime harmonica mode, blowing some incredible stuff. Impossibly huge tone.

Paul Oscher, Muddy Waters' former harmonica player, had introduced me to tongue blocking on the harp a couple of months before, so I had that concept on the brain. Wolf’s first set ended and the rest of the band hit the bar, but the Wolf stayed on his stool under the lights, staring at the floor. Naturally, I just had to ask him whether he tongue blocked on the harp.

As I walked toward him my legs got wobbly. The Wolf was one of the largest—and certainly most intimidating—humans I had ever approached. Somehow I managed to open my mouth and stammer out an introduction. I was a harp player, I explained. I threw out Paul’s name, haltingly explained that he had just introduced me to this mysterious technique, complimented the Wolf effusively on his harmonica work, and asked him if he tongue blocked on that thing.

An eternity passed as the Wolf slowly lifted his penetrating gaze from my shoes to my eyes. Several seconds of silence ensued, which felt like forever. Then suddenly that otherworldly voice was addressed to me.

“The Wolf don’t tell nobody his tricks,” the Wolf balefully intoned. “If you find out, the Wolf don’t mind. But the Wolf ain’t gonna tell you about it.” I beat a hasty retreat.

One thing for sure: there will never be another Howlin' Wolf.

Walter Horton

Today is the birthday of Walter Horton, one of the musicians who had the biggest influence on me. Walter grew up in Horn Lake, Mississippi and by the time he was a teenager he had moved a few miles north to Memphis. His childhood friend, bluesman Johnny Shines, told writer Peter Guralnick about meeting Horton when they were both youngsters in Mississippi:

“Walter would be sitting on the porch, blowing in tin cans, you know, he’d blow in tin cans, and he’d get sounds out of these things. You see, this harmonica blowing is really a mark for Walter, it’s not something he picked up—he was born to do it. And he’s gonna do that. I believe he’d crack tomorrow with a harp in his hand and he’d keep it in his hand. And probably you could never take that harp away from him.”

If you ever heard Horton blow the harp, you would have no problem believing that he could get music out of a tin can. Walter had a unique, very melodic approach to the blues harp that showed the strong influence of the amazing collection of great jug band harmonica players like Noah Lewis and Will Shade who were active in Memphis in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Walter claimed to have recorded with the Memphis Jug Band when he was nine years old; he definitely backed Little Buddy Doyle on that singer’s 1939 recordings. He worked outside of music through most of the 1940s, but in 1952 legendary producer Sam Phillips recorded several sides for Sun Records with Horton. One of them, “Easy,” is a bona fide blues harp masterpiece.

Horton moved to Chicago not long after and quickly became top harp man in a city loaded with harmonica players. Horton made many brilliant recordings of his own and contributed stellar harmonica work to sessions with Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, Otis Rush, Jimmy Rogers, Sunnyland Slim, Otis Spann, and Robert Nighthawk, among others.

When I was going to college in NYC, I hitchhiked up to Boston several times to see Horton play at Joe’s Place, where he was backed up by Johnny Nicholas and his great band. Those shows were a total revelation to me—Horton’s sound was huge and gorgeous, and he greatly expanded my notion of what was possible on the harmonica. I also able to spend time with Walter at his table between sets. Walter was by nature a shy person, but after a few drinks he would let out with all kinds of outrageous statements. He gave me his address in Chicago and told me the amazing experience that would be mine if I ever showed up for a lesson. “I got a motherf----n’ x-ray machine, man, and I will slap that f----r up against my face and you will see EVERYTHING.” I did a show with him at the Rainbow Tavern in Seattle and he invited me to join him onstage for his last set, which no doubt will always stand as my most amazing musical experience. Walter was really something else.

Portland

I'm wrapping up a really wonderful two-year stint in New York City, one of the most amazing places on earth. I came here because of a cool job opportunity, and I’ve enjoyed almost every minute of it and did my best to enjoy what Manhattan has to offer. The best part of this sojourn—by far—was reconnecting with so many East Coast friends. But my family, my girlfriend, and most of my personal tribe are in the Pacific Northwest, and I’ll be headed home in about a month. I’ll be moving to Portland, Oregon. I’ve always enjoyed the Rose City, I have many friends there, I’ve been totally impressed for decades by the passionate and incredibly talented music community in that town, and it’s within striking distance of Seattle. I don’t speak fluent hipster, but I’m ready to step up to that challenge. Really, really excited about the next chapter.

Emmylou

Emmylou Harris turned 70 today. Most people discovered Gram Parsons through Emmylou Harris, but I discovered Emmylou Harris through Gram Parsons. I was lucky enough to see Gram and the Flying Burrito Brothers live four times when I was in high school in Seattle. I was in college in NYC when Gram’s first solo album, “GP,” came out, and that’s how I first heard the otherwordly, shimmering voice of Emmylou Harris.

I saw them both together a few months later at Max’s Kansas City. The show was basically a mess. Gram was shaky, the band was weak, and the material leaned toward vintage rock and roll tunes, which was not exactly Parsons’ forte. Emmylou (this was her first tour) sang great but looked spooked. There was a pause in the program to get a guitar set up so that Dave Mason could sit in, and Gram and Emmylou stepped up with just Gram’s acoustic and sang “The Devil’s Jeweled Crown.” Those few minutes were unforgettable.

A couple of years later I was back in Seattle and Emmylou brought her phenomenal Hot Band to town. What a transformation. Harris was now a totally confident performer and bandleader who had fashioned a unique sound and repertoire for herself. She’s been a pillar of soulfulness and integrity on the country scene for over forty years now and has helped the careers of countless artists. I’ve always especially loved this gorgeous tune, which Harris wrote as a tribute to Gram Parsons.

Emmylou Harris on the German music show "Musikladen" in 1977.

James Cotton

I was seventeen the night I walked up the ramps at Eagles Auditorium in downtown Seattle to catch the James Cotton Blues Band. This was the (justifiably) legendary early Cotton band, with Luther Tucker on guitar, Francis Clay on drums, Alberto Gianquinto on piano, and Bobby Anderson on bass. I had been playing the trumpet in school bands for seven years, but in terms of live music, I was green, with a pair of fresh ears that were wide open. Looking back, I can’t believe how lucky I was to walk into that show at such a tender age when I was in no way prepared for the experience.

Cotton was only in his mid-thirties then, but he already had done a lifetime of gigs. Born in Tunica, Mississippi, Cotton moved in with Rice (Sonny Boy Williamson) Miller at the age of nine (!), and he inherited Miller’s band six years later when Miller moved to Chicago. He spent a half dozen years as part of the thriving Memphis blues scene, along with Howlin’ Wolf, Bobby Bland, Junior Parker and B.B. King, and he made his first recordings there for Sun Records. Then came a twelve-year stint with Muddy Waters. Cotton developed into not only a master harp player, but a truly great singer and showman as well. He was the whole package.

The night I saw him, Cotton had just recently formed his own band and gone out on his own. The young James was a fountain of energy onstage, pacing relentlessly back and forth throughout the entire set. Cotton somehow pulled off “The Creeper,” his complex, tour de force harp instrumental, while doing somersaults. He was the first performer I saw do the sixty-foot-cord stunt, and when he walked right past me popping that harp in and out of his mouth, I was a goner.
That showmanship and physicality ensured that I would never forget that Eagles show, but it was Cotton’s harp sound that changed my life. I had never heard amplified harp before. My trumpet playing had made me a confirmed wind-instrument player, and I did know a few things about tone, breath control, and phrasing, but I had never heard a sound like the one Cotton got out of those Marine Bands. In the middle of the show Cotton stepped on the reverb pedal and served up an impossibly deep slow blues in the echo chamber, a number he recorded as “Blues In My Sleep.” It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my young life. It made me literally weak in the knees, and it left me determined to get on the trail to track it down. I went to the music store the next day and bought a C Marine Band, and I’ve been trying, for the most part fruitlessly, to figure out Cotton’s magical sound ever since.

I got to see him many, many times in a multitude of settings, cities, and venues. I got to open for him on a few occasions, and I was able to spend some time in his presence and to hear some of his stories. Such a privilege. I once opened for him at the Backstage in Seattle. I was excited not only because I was on the bill with me hero, but because Luther Tucker had rejoined James this tour of the West Coast. I got to hear them recreate some of that magic that whipped me so badly that night at Eagles Auditorium. That night, talking in the “dressing room” between sets I asked James if he’d do me a favor and let me get a photo of the two of us. Cotton was relaxing on a couch, and he good naturedly said “Sure, but I ain’t gettin’ up off of this damn sofa to do it.” So I slid in next to him and made myself comfortable, too.

A few years back tapes of a live gig in Montreal by the same Cotton band I heard that night at Eagles were issued on a pair of CDs. I love those recordings because when I put them on I’m instantly right back there, listening with fresh ears. In a few minutes, after I get some dinner, I’ll be settling down in another couch to listen to them again. Thanks for the energy, the soulfulness, and that beautiful sound, James.

Lightnin'

Today is the birthday of Lightnin’ Hopkins. There was, or is, no deeper bluesman. An inspired and unique guitarist, a mesmerizing singer, a master showman with off-the-charts charisma. and a born troubadour who sang brilliantly about whatever was happening to him in that instant.

The first time I saw him was many years ago in NYC. He was opening for Muddy Waters. Lightnin’ was backed by a game bass player who skillfully followed Hopkins’ free-form chord changes. Lightnin’ was dressed to the nines in a gorgeous, dark-blue pinstripe suit, alligator shoes, and shades. His marcelled hair shone blue in the stage lights. Lightnin’ was totally on fire that night. From the first note he had the audience hypnotized. After about forty-five minutes he launched his set into the stratosphere with one of his patented, monster boogie grooves in E. It was insane. When he finished the crowd leaped to their feet and applauded thunderously. Lightnin’ walked off the stage and a timorous hippie emcee walked up to the microphone and tried to get the crowd’s attention. After about five solid minutes the ovation began to subside, and the emcee gave out with some pathetic statement along the lines of “Wasn’t Lightnin’ great? We’d love to have him play longer, but we only have the hall until midnight (?) and we have to get the great Muddy Waters out here.”

Just as the disappointed, muttering crowd began to finally quiet and sit back down, Lightnin’, the cagey old veteran, poked his head out from behind the stage curtain and waved at the crowd. The poor emcee never saw this; Hopkins was behind him. All the ponytailed master of ceremonies knew was that for some unknown reason the audience had suddenly vaulted upright again and was screaming hoarsely for Lightnin’. He had no choice but to bring Hopkins out again, and Lightnin’ made the most of it, playing twenty more incendiary minutes. Muddy seemed to enjoy it as much if not more as we did. He invited Lightnin’ onstage during his set and the two blues legends sang a beautiful version of “Rocky Mountain Blues” together. Giants walked the earth in those days.

I don't have the copyright of this video, but I believe that anyone can be able to have access to the world music history. Sam John Hopkins (March 15, 1912 -- January 30, 1982), better known as Lightnin' Hopkins, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Houston, Texas.