I never really recovered from Junior Wells’ album Hoodoo Man Blues. A zillion years ago I asked my older brother to teach me how to play the bass in a blues band, and he handed me the record, nearly twenty years old already. “That’s about it,” he said, and he was right.
The album cover showed Junior Wells in the 1965, nobody’s business business suit bluesman regalia that was captured so accurately and amiably in The Blues Brothers.
But by 1971, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy and friends were in orbit around the planet Dacron in the Huggy Bear galaxy:
The sartorial fastball might be coming in high and outside, but with the same amount of mustard as ever.
In movies, there are actors commonly referred to as “That Guy.” That Guy actors are fellas who never starred in much of anything, but seem to at least be in hundreds of movies. Movie producers and directors rely on them to be able to show up and bring something special to the film, even if their name doesn’t merit the marquee.
Let’s use the term in music this time. Otis Rush is not That Guy in this video. Otis never received the kind of notoriety that fellas like Muddy Waters or BB King, or even Albert King achieved. But he was hardly obscure, especially if you were a blues aficionado. In many ways, he was the most influential Chicago blues guitar player I can name. I played in blues bands in the seventies and eighties, and more people wanted to play like Otis Rush than anyone else.
But that drummer. Now he’s That Guy, that’s for sure, blues-wise. That’s Fred Below. You probably don’t know his name, but you know his music. All my guitar playing friends knew they wanted to sound like Otis Rush, but the drummers all ended up playing like Fred Below without even knowing it. He sort of invented the Chicago Blues drumming style.
If you think I’m exaggerating about Fred’s invisible notoriety, I’ll mention that it’s him you hear playing the drums on Johnny B. Goode, and a hearty helping of other Check Berry hits. He played with Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, and of course Otis Rush.
And you can try your whole life long to get your freak on every whichaway you want, and never equal his beret, cravat, and Van Dyke beard.
You can’t really be sure you’re getting over with an audience until they make you play the same song twice.
That’s the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1960. They wanted a taste of that pure Chicago blues sound, and man, they got it. Muddy Waters was at the height of his power just then. That’s a great band. Otis Spann on piyanee. James Cotton on the mouth organ. Francis Clay is the sinister drummer, and he’s percolating.
Otis Spann was an interesting person. He’s more or less the greatest Blues piano player ever. He was born, amusingly if you’re a Donald Fagen fan, at the foot of Mount Belzoni. Otis’ father was a piano player named Friday Ford, a blues name the equal of which I couldn’t possibly come up with if you chained me to a Royal typewriter for a hundred years. His mother played guitar, and his stepfather, who gave him his last name, was either a preacher who played music, or a musician who preached. Otis died young, in 1970, and slept in an unmarked grave in Illinois for nearly thirty years. Ain’t that the blues, right there? Some fans got some money together and plopped some granite in the cemetery in 1999, but ain’t no grave gonna hold that body down anyway.
It’s interesting, but Otis’ replacement, Pinetop Perkins, was from Belzoni, too. I performed once with Pinetop, in a cathouse. That puts me in very select company. Since Pinetop lived for 97 years, and did two shows a day for nearly every damn one of them, I estimate that only 73% of the adult population of the United States ever performed with him. I drank more Johnny Walker Red with him than all of them combined, though. It’s been more than thirty years since that night, and the headache is finally starting to fade.
Wikipedia says Pinetop at first played the guitar, but got stabbed by a chorus girl, and the tendon damage made it impossible to fret the chords properly, so he switched to piano. Pinetop told me it was the chorus girl’s boyfriend. You decide which is the better story, and go with it. Pinetop did.
Tag: blues
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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