Rubber City Review

I’m usually not a “let us praise our fallen rock heroes” kind of guy. But I have to admit, the passing of Levon Helm hit me a little hard.

And I’m not sure I can really explain why. I always had the greatest respect for The Band, but I probably was overexposed to them as a kid, which is why they rarely showed up on my “steady rotation” playlist at home.

Still, Levon Helm always was an inspiration. Most of my favorite songs by The Band featured Levon, front and center – The Weight, Up on Cripple Creek, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Rag Mama Rag… To me, his voice is as real as it gets. And I don’t think it has anything to do with a misplaced sense of national pride, in that Levon was the only American (an Okie at that) in a band otherwise full of Canucks.

Maybe I’m a sucker for a guy who can lay down a rock-solid rhythm on drums while singing with so much soul. I definitely found him to be the funkiest, rootsiest member of The Band. In fact, the song from their catalog that I probably listened to the most wasn’t even an original – it was their cover of a Motown single by Marvin Gaye, Baby Don’t You Do It. The song opened up The Band’s great live album “Rock of Ages,” recorded at the NYC Academy of Music during the last few days of 1971 (I especially dug the legendary Allen Toussaint’s horn charts on this tune and 10 others). And Levon tore into it like a junkyard dog on a dangling leg: Don’t Do It

Levon and the Hawks

The Band started out as honest-to-god, roots-rockin’ road dogs – playing blues, rockabilly and honky-tonk covers in dives across the U.S. and Canada. They originally came together as Ronnie Hawkins’ backup band the Hawks, but eventually morphed into Levon and the Hawks (which should tell you something about Levon’s status in the band) and the Canadian Squires.

Here’s a garage-rocker by the Squires that I featured in a previous post, with some wonderfully sloppy harmonica by guitarist Robbie Robertson: Uh Uh Uh

Probably no need to go into the much-celebrated catalog of The Band, including their many storied collaborations with Bob Dylan. You can find countless tomes online and elsewhere praising them as the very definition of what we now commonly label as Americana. But I thought I should feature this little number from an outstanding box set compiled by Robertson – “The Band: A Musical History.” It was recorded live with Dylan at Carnegie Hall, ’68: I Ain’t Got No Home

The Band eventually dissolved in a slew of allegations regarding where the money was going – mainly to Robertson, the group’s primary songwriter. Although I haven’t read “This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band” (it’s next on my list), my understanding is that Levon and other members felt they were unfairly cut out of a large portion of The Band’s revenue. It seemed like even before Robertson left The Band, he started to view himself as a solo artist working with hired hands who simply played what he wanted them to play. But I doubt Levon would’ve tolerated that kind of arrangement, given his larger-than-life personality and talent.

Enough about that… I’ll confess that I spent more time following Levon as a solo artist, starting with some tasty tunes he recorded in ’77 as “Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars.” The band included one of my main guys on blues harp, Paul Butterfield, as well as a few other notables such as Booker T and the MGs and Dr. John. None of it broke new ground, but there’s a lot to like if you’re a fan of Memphis soul and blues:

Speaking of blues, Levon, Garth Hudson of The Band and Butterfield provided a lot of the highlights on one of my favorite late-era albums by Muddy Waters: “The Woodstock Album.” It might not have the snarl of Muddy’s comeback record with Johnny Winter, “Hard Again,” but I always loved the hard-driving sound of Levon’s snare drum on this album – like he’s beating a cardboard box with a giant hambone. Muddy’s big, booming voice might be the main attraction, but Levon makes you wonder how he would’ve fared as a Chess Records session guy. And then there’s the gravy – mainly, Butterfield playing like a man possessed and Hudson rocking out on accordion (yeah, you heard it right… he must’ve had some Clifton Chenier in his record collection): Going Down to Main Street

Despite its many highlights, “hit and miss” would be a fair description of Levon’s 35-year career as a solo artist… that is, until he got around to recording his last two studio albums, “Dirt Farmer” and “Electric Dirt.” I think both Grammy-winning releases – recorded long after he was diagnosed with throat cancer – serve as prime examples of everything that’s good and right about Levon. Although his voice obviously had a rougher edge in his final years, he really dug in to put these songs across with the passion and energy of a much younger (and healthier) man. And he seemed to be stealing back a few years on drums too. I never had the good fortune to make it to one of the Rambles that Levon held at his barn in Woodstock, NY. But most accounts of those performances typically include two disparate observations: 1) Levon looked every bit his age and more as he shuffled around the barn and 2) he gave no quarter when he was behind his kit. If you came to play, you’d better get used to the feeling of that bass-drumming boot up your ass. False Hearted Lover Blues

Call me callous, but the news of Levon’s passing made all the hoopla around Dick Clark’s demise seem even more trivial (I had to laugh at a tweet by comedian Rob Delaney: “Ryan Seacrest holding strategy meeting to properly calibrate ‘emotion’ in his Dick Clark statement”). Slick hucksters come and go, but there’s a special place in the rock ‘n roll firmament for a guy who combined a timeless appeal with a deep understanding of what this music is all about. And let’s not forget those prodigious chops (apparently, Levon was Buddy Rich’s favorite rock drummer).

As MTV’s Bill Flanagan said so eloquently (I know, MTV and eloquently don’t belong in the same sentence) in a moving tribute to Levon on CBS Sunday Morning, “the last 10 miraculous years gave Levon a sort of extended victory lap… It was as if heaven decided to give Levon an extra decade, just so we could all hear his songs one more time. Just to give Levon and the people who loved him a proper chance to say goodbye.”

RIP Levon… And don’t be too hard on Robertson when he shows up.

Up on Cripple Creek, from The Last Waltz… Any doubt that Levon was the heart and soul of The Band?

The Black Keys and John Fogerty pay tribute to Levon Helm – rehearsing backstage at Coachella:

Here’s a re-post of an item we first published back in October 2009 (RCR’s third post… we’re now up to 115). It remains the most visited page on our site, by far – and it doesn’t even include a photo of Kim Kardashian. Maybe we should just devote our entire blog to Little Walter.

Greetings from Carefree, AZ… where they like to point out “it’s a ‘dry’ heat.”

I’m using this brief respite from the Rubber City as an opportunity to read yet another book about an important musician – even though I’ve gone far beyond the recommended lifetime quota for such books.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend any of them to people who don’t share my obsessive-compulsive approach to American roots music.  Because once you strip away the “who played with who, what label, which session, who produced, what instruments/amplifiers/accessories were used, how impaired were the players, which substances were abused”… there’s really not that much left to talk about.

But as a service to my readers who aren’t inclined to care about such things, I’m offering this layman’s guide to a few of my favorites:

Hope that helps…

I’ve just finished “Blues with a Feeling: The Little Walter Story,” by Tony Glover, Scott Dirks and Ward Gaines.  And this one’s an especially tough read for those who have only a passing interest in the world’s greatest harmonica player.  It’s stuffed with details on virtually every session that featured Walter as a leader or sideman – not to mention countless gigs where he at least showed up to play (Walter was notorious for letting other harp players take over in the middle of his gigs so he could go somewhere else to drink or get high, or both).  But once again, I’m hooked… and I can’t believe it took me this long to read about the single most innovative and influential bluesman that Chicago ever spawned.

I’ve played blues harp in bar bands for years.  I learned by ear when I was a teenager, playing mostly bluegrass with my brothers and fumbling along to third-generation blues tunes covered by rock bands like The Allman Brothers Band and Derek and the Dominoes.  The latter’s version of Walter’s “Key to the Highway” is perfect for harp neophytes – nearly 10 minutes of the same chord changes, a steady mid-tempo groove, and no flashy harp player to discourage you. Key to the Highway — Derek & The Dominos

But like any self-respecting blues hound, I eventually decided it was time to sniff out the hard stuff, so I borrowed a Little Walter album that kept staring at me when I’d visit my sister – a two-record set that had this bizarre illustration on the cover of Walter in a tux, standing in front of what appears to be a shipwrecked bar.

But this record was the motherlode for aspiring harp players.  And if you felt the least bit insecure about your playing when you dropped the needle on this one, you’d surely toss your harmonicas out for good after hearing Walter’s unbeatable tone and technique.  Here’s one of my favorite solos from Walter’s own recordings… My friend Andy calls it one of his “runaway riffs” – a good way to describe Walter in full flight. Mellow Down Easy

Walter’s powerful instrumentals seemed to openly mock his competitors – a useless exercise when you consider he really didn’t have any peers.  And his stuff sounds just as fresh and vital today as it did when he first shook up the blues world back in the 1950s.

He saved some of his best riffs for tunes he recorded with Muddy Waters, and my favorite is his solo on Muddy’s I Just Want To Make Love To You.  I’m amazed he pulled this one off – it’s so outside and alien, light years ahead of what anyone was putting down in Chicago at the time.  Maybe there’s a reason he named one of his instrumentals Flying Saucer… On this one, it sounds like he beamed himself into the studio, straight from the spaceship. I Just Want To Make Love To You — Muddy Waters

Walter’s own singles became jukebox standards – both the instrumental Juke and the hugely popular My Babe hit number one on the nation’s R&B charts.  And he soon eclipsed Muddy as the most popular artist on the Chess Record label.  In the book, harp player Billy Boy Arnold tops the blues academics in describing Walter’s appeal: “…a girl told me once that ‘Little Walter sound like a hipped-up Muddy Waters,’ meaning the same music, just hipped up some – and she described it right.  He was just wailing, he was a swinger; a lot of beautiful solos.”

Of course, fame can be fleeting, and Walter soon was standing in the shadows of the new rock ‘n roll artists who were taking over the Chess studios – especially Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley… although “The Bo” (as he liked to call himself) and Walter had great respect for one another and even recorded the following classic together: Diddley Daddy — Bo Diddley

Walter was a rough character who seemed to literally fight his way through life.  He was beaten up by more than a few racist cops, but also stepped into a number of scrapes he could’ve easily avoided, including several with jealous husbands.  He eventually succumbed to full-blown alcoholism and died in 1968 when one too many blows to the head sent a blood clot to his heart (“Blues with a Feeling” includes at least seven or eight wildly different accounts of Walter’s last scuffle).

The book’s epilogue offers this sad and sobering look at Walter’s demise: “Maybe when he saw how fleeting the fame and fortune was, he lost respect for his own gift – and for himself. And once he began his prolonged downward spiral, circumstances and his own choices seemed to conspire to bring it to its inevitable conclusion.”

Walter on Disc:

If you’re starting to search for that two-LP set, rest easy — there’s plenty of Walter available on disc…

In a more perfect world, every new homeowner in America would receive a free copy of Walter’s “Best” — part of the Chess 50th Anniversary Collection.  Hard-core fans can dive into “The Complete Chess Masters: 1950-1967,” a five-disc, 126-track set on Hip-O Select.  However, it includes a number of duds and alternate takes and none of the 50-plus prime cuts Walter recorded with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers.  But Walter was a jazzman at heart and never played the same solo twice, so the alternates can be supremely rewarding for more dedicated listeners.

Given the fact that Walter lived and played on the edge, there are few surviving videos showing him in action.  I’ll leave you with these two.

The first is a nice, if brief, career overview that played at his 2008 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (oddly enough, as a sideman)… You can find it here.

The second appears to be the only available video on youtube of Walter performing live, with Hound Dog Taylor in Europe (1967).   Now I’m a big fan of both Walter and Taylor, but they weren’t the most compatible musicians.  Walter was an avowed disciple of jump-jazz great Louis Jordan, while Taylor clearly modeled himself after the far-raunchier Elmore James (for prime Hound Dog, check out “Release the Hound,” which includes live cuts recorded at various Cleveland dives).  In several interviews, Walter didn’t hide his disdain for Taylor’s down-home style.  But the video remains a fascinating look at two great bluesmen, playing it the only way they knew how.

Since we got some of you to play along to “My First Album,” I decided to try something else along the same lines: What’s your most memorable concert experience?

The venue can be anything from a small club to an arena. And the experience can have little to do with the music being performed, as I’ll demonstrate shortly.

My concert-going years got off to a very auspicious start in the summer of 1969 when my older sister Mary took my sister Keena and me to see Janis Joplin at Blossom Music Center, an outdoor amphitheater nestled in the rolling hills near the Cuyahoga River valley. My 13-year-old synapses were fried by Joplin’s powerful voice and the Stax-influenced soul of her Kozmic Blues Band (only days after they performed at Woodstock). If we didn’t have front-row seats, we were damn close – and I distinctly remember Joplin taking several generous pulls on a bottle of Southern Comfort during the show. Opening act: Rod Stewart and the Faces. Cost of three tickets: $7.50.

A few posts back, I wrote about my good/bad fortune of seeing the Stones during their legendary ’72 (“Exile on Main Street”) tour. A month later – August 21, 1972, to be precise – I almost became an Altamont-like casualty when the Jefferson Airplane brought their traveling circus to the same venue, the Akron Rubber Bowl.

My favorite part of the show was the opening act – Hot Tuna, with Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady along with legendary blues fiddler Papa John Creach. Could’ve listened to that for about two hours: Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning Then the Airplane hit the stage and all hell broke loose. Everything was fine until about halfway into their set, when I suddenly felt like someone was choking me and gouging my eyes out at the same time. Apparently, the police had teargassed some kids at the top of the bowl, and the gas then settled on the field below, where a few thousand of us were blissfully unaware of the small riot going on nearby. Next thing I knew, someone on stage was urging us to “attack the pigs,” and then the show was over (thankfully, because I was ready to rip off my own head at that point).

The Akron Beacon Journal broke the news to all of our parents the next day with the headline at right. And it’s a classic piece of modern journalism. I’ll share with you three of my favorite items from this story:

• First, when singer Grace Slick was confronted by Patrolman R.E. Gott in a basement office, she “reached out to grab his whistle chain on her way out of the office. Gott said she made a clawing motion for his face after he tried to prevent her from pulling his chain.” Slick and fellow Airplane member Paul Kantner were arrested for assaulting a policeman, since Akron had yet to pass a chain-pulling ordinance.
• Second, the reporter quoted the band’s New York press agent by noting that “Miss Slick is not formally married to Kantner, but that ‘he is her old man.’”
• And third, a local City Councilman who opposed rock concerts at the Rubber Bowl from the beginning said “I’m not against all kinds of shows. For instance, the Osman Brothers (sic) and some other shows were not at all bad.”

Good stuff. Apparently, Slick and Kantner had to return to Akron to negotiate a deal with local prosecutors. I don’t think they’ve been back since.

Did you ever attend a sold-out show with an adoring crowd and feel like everyone else was sipping on some special Kool-Aid that they forgot to share with you?

I remember going to Bogart’s in Cincinnati to see the pride of Cleveland, the Michael Stanley Band. My overall impression of the show was that a team of scientists had successfully come up with a perfectly bland and generic strain of rock. I also noticed that every time someone jammed a guitar into his crotch, the crowd would go wild (tried that later with my own band, but it didn’t seem to work as well).

I had a similar reaction when someone dragged me to see the post-punk band the Violent Femmes at the Newport in Columbus. Again, packed house, adoring fans. They kicked things off with some lame acoustic-sounding number and I thought, give it a chance – they’ll probably work their way into a complete frenzy later on. Well, that never happened (Violent Femmes… another inappropriately named band, like 10,000 Maniacs). And by the time the show was over, I was convinced I could walk out of the club, head in either direction and find a better band playing on the street.

And, of course, there’s Jimmy Buffett. Has anyone else made an entire career out of phoning it in? Then again, if you continually play in front of thousands of fans who know every lyric to every song you’ve ever written, why would you bother breaking a sweat? I mainly remember being pissed off by the long lines at the margarita vendors, because I was convinced that being shitfaced was the only way to truly appreciate this experience… or at least tolerate it.

Of course, we don’t drag ourselves away from our home theater systems to be routinely disappointed by live music. And I’ve seen plenty of powerful, life-affirming shows over the years. I’ve already touched on some of those performances in this blog – Lowell George with a fine, funky band at Bogart’s, only two weeks before his untimely demise… Danny Gatton at U.S. Blues in NYC, schooling every guitar player in the crowd… Gatemouth Brown at Stache’s in Columbus, serving as both the main act and bouncer… Bo Diddley at the Cincinnati Gardens, with yours truly backing him up on harp…

I also feel blessed to have seen Muddy Waters at the Cleveland Agora (must’ve been around ’76, with Pinetop Perkins on piano, Jerry Portnoy on harp and Bob Margolin on guitar). Even though Muddy was past his prime, I felt like I’d found my way to the blues mountaintop… the amazing sound of that voice still haunts me today. And I’ll always treasure the night that bro-in-law Chuck Auerbach and me watched Delbert McClinton and his red-hot band turn New York City’s Lone Star Café into a Texas roadhouse. We were practically giddy (as opposed to “geddy,” the feeling one gets at a Rush concert) driving through the empty streets of Manhattan at 3 in the morning – high on honky tonk soul and R&B.

More recently, I’ve watched Chuck’s son Dan and his bandmate Pat Carney destroy countless stages across the country as The Black Keys. One of my favorite Keys shows was in Manhattan at Terminal 5, with opening act Heartless Bastards. Granted, the Bastards’ Erika Wennerstrom ain’t no Janis, but she won me over with her soulful voice and tough little band as they tore through great originals like this one: The Mountain/Heartless Bastards

Erika Wennerstrom and Heartless Bastards

And what about Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, bringing back the spirit of James Brown and his Famous Flames? I’m Not Gonna Cry/Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

Then there’s West Coast Latino-rockers Ozomatli, who turned the floor of Cleveland’s House of Blues into the world’s hippest drum circle (this next cut is from their album “Embrace the Chaos”)… Suenos en Realidad/Ozomatli

I’m sure many of you can add about 20 more to this list – and I hope you will. That’s why we still drag our asses out of the house, because we never know when we’ll get that giddy (or geddy) feeling again.

Some random concert memories from family members…

Brother Jack recalls the “anything goes” ethos of the Sixties at the folk music capital of the Midwest, Ann Arbor, where he saw Jim Kweskin (without his Jug Band) going through a strange phase: ”The philosophy seemed to be that performing is bad. It’s fake and separates the audience from the performer. So he just went up onstage and sat. He chatted with the audience for a little bit but mostly just sat there. Occasionally, if he felt like it, he would pick up the guitar and play a song. In the end it was a piece of performance art. It got people talking. Some folks would say it was dreadful, boring. Others would say it was just a matter of expectations. ‘We expect too much of performers… Just go in not expecting anything and you will be satisfied.’”

Keena had an unsettling experience at a Lou Reed show at Akron’s beautiful Civic Theater. “I turned around and some guy behind me was masturbating. Should’ve been my first clue that Lou Reed was gay. I guess I was too young to pick up on the subtle nuances of Walk On The Wild Side.”

Dan tells a great story about bandmate Pat Carney (pre-Black Keys) trying to promote his fledgling music career at a performance by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Carney took a cassette tape of some of his original music to the show, hoping to hand it to Spencer. He worked his way to the front of the crowd during the band’s set and placed the tape on the stage. Without missing a beat, Spencer leapt in front of Carney and used the heel of his boot to smash the tape into little pieces. Thankfully, Pat’s dreams of rock stardom didn’t die along with it.

The floor is open… Let’s hear about some of your favorite concert experiences.

Janis Joplin at Woodstock… only days before she brought her Kozmic Blues Band to Blossom:

The real Leonard Chess (seated) with Phil at right

A few months ago, my blogging buddy April asked me what I thought about the movie “Cadillac Records,” a glossy look back at the birth of modern electric blues at Chicago’s Chess label in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

My quick response was “not much,” given the project’s main goal of bringing some blues cred – and the thespian merit badge for portraying a tortured druggy artist – to the worldwide franchise that is Beyonce, who plays R&B singer Etta James in the movie. But after I gave it more thought, I decided any film that brings a little Wolf, Walter and Muddy to the masses ain’t such a bad thing.

Most people have a passing familiarity with Chess blues, even if they don’t realize it. They’ve probably heard the Howlin’ Wolf classic Smokestack Lightning in a Viagra commercial. Or maybe they remember Led Zeppelin’s version of Sonny Boy Williamson’s Bring It On Home from ‘69. Or maybe they had too much to drink in a corner bar while the cover band mangled Got My Mojo Working by Muddy Waters.

If “Cadillac Records” encouraged some of these folks to dig a little deeper into the Chess catalog, then it was probably worth the $12 million it took to make it. And it appears the movie accomplished this objective, generating brisk sales of a companion CD (forget the official soundtrack) called “Best of Chess: Original Versions of Songs in Cadillac Records,” featuring prime slabs of Chess goodness by Muddy, Wolf, Etta, Little Walter, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry.

The fact is, there are very few clunkers in the Chess blues catalog, which shouldn’t be surprising given the artists involved and the street smarts of Leonard Chess, who founded the label in 1950 with his brother Phil. Then again, the two men often employed an operating philosophy best described as “DIY.” And Leonard was prodded into recording the label’s bread and butter – primal yet tightly arranged electric blues – by the artists themselves. Also, despite the success of those songs, he would often record harp virtuoso Little Walter without his signature amplified sound.

But by the time Muddy teamed up with bassist/songwriter Willie Dixon and started recording with his game-changing band in 1953 – Little Walter on harp, Otis Spann on piano, Jimmy Rogers on guitar and Elgin Evans on drums – the label had hit its stride. Hoochie Coochie Man, I Just Want To Make Love To You, I’m Ready, Mannish Boy… The only thing that came close to rivaling those amazing songs was the major fuss that Ray Charles created over at Atlantic Records, recording primarily in New York City with a group of hired studio hands. Let’s put the two artists back-to-back in this next sample to get a better sense of how Brother Ray was feeding off the hard stops and starts that had become a staple of Muddy’s working band in Chicago (Hoochie Coochie was recorded in January ’54; Greenbacks in November of that year): (I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man/Muddy Waters-Greenbacks/Ray Charles

Chess even scored with the occasional attempt to latch onto the folk music craze. “Folk Singer” was just as vital as other albums Muddy released in the ‘60s, and “The Real Folk Blues” records sold well too – although I’m sure the coffeehouse crowd was thrown for a loop by these convenient excuses to repackage some fairly menacing and hard-driving blues singles by Muddy, Wolf and Sonny Boy.

Let’s put the hits aside for now and listen to a few tunes that were featured as part of the “Chess Collectibles” series, along with a couple other out-of-print releases.

“One More Mile” (Chess Collectibles Vol. 1, released in ’94) pulled together 41 rare and previously unreleased recordings by Muddy in a wide range of settings. My favorite cuts in the collection feature Muddy either solo or backed only by Louis Myers (original sideman for Little Walter with his band The Aces) on acoustic guitar and Mojo Bruford on harp. Blues promoter Willy Leiser recorded these tunes for a radio broadcast in ’72 while Muddy and band were in Europe to play at the Montreux Jazz Festival. As Mary Katherine Aldin points out in the liner notes, “Perhaps the forced semi-acoustic format of the radio broadcast brought back memories of some of Muddy’s earlier songs and styles, since the majority of the tunes he chose to do that day had very old roots in his repertoire.” Here’s a powerful solo performance of a song Muddy first recorded in 1948: Feel Like Goin’ Home/Muddy Waters

Howlin’ Wolf also got the Collectible treatment in ’94 with “Ain’t Gonna Be Your Dog.” And, once again, I was drawn to the bare-bones stuff that sounds unlike anything else in the artist’s Chess catalog. Ironically, the four acoustic tunes (and an accompanying interview) were recorded in ’68 as part of a promo for his psychedelic album, which clearly inspired The Black Keys when they were trying to come up with a cover for their album “Brothers” (artwork for Wolf’s album at left). Wolf famously referred to the album as “birdshit.” Others loved it. I’ll stick with the acoustic songs – the only time Chess recorded Wolf solo. Maybe the setting put Wolf (like Muddy) in a pensive mood, thinking about the past and songs like this one, which is about as psychedelic as Don Draper’s wardrobe: I Ain’t Gonna Be Your Dog No More/Howlin’ Wolf

Volume 3 in the Chess Collectible series belongs to Little Walter – my personal favorite of the three. And if you share my obsession with all things Walter, you should just go ahead and spring for the five-disc “The Complete Chess Masters (1950-1967).” Given Walter’s phenomenal jazz-like chops (and unlike many of his blues brethren), he rarely fell back on a rote set of licks or solos. Which makes this set a fascinating listen when you compare the masters with various alternate takes. Case in point: the blazing instrumental Juke… In this next clip, listen to the opening riffs in the first sample (the master) and the second (alternate take). If I were Leonard Chess, I’d be hard-pressed to pick which one to release. Both are exceptionally strong, and the alternate certainly deserved a better fate than the 43 years it remained on the shelf in the U.S.: Juke (master)-Juke (alt.)/Little Walter

A few posts back, I waxed poetic about a four-disc set of Sonny Boy Williamson’s complete recordings on Chess’s Checker Records subsidiary. And one of the great joys of this collection is listening to the alternate takes on disc four, complete with some typically profane studio chatter between Sonny Boy and Leonard Chess. We featured the famous Little Village conversation in a previous post. Here’s another exchange involving the song 99 (or “do the 69,” as Leonard says at the top). When it came to music, Leonard Chess only knew what he liked. So he offered very little in terms of specific instructions to Sonny Boy – other than “sing it like you mean it” and “not so much blowin’ on the intro.” And, of course, Sonny Boy would give it right back, which would lead to more personal comments about women on the side and Chess having his “nose in that man’s ass.” Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that place… 99/Sonny Boy Williamson II

I’ll close with a couple cuts from another great (and hard to find) release – “Wrinkles: Classic and Rare Chess Instrumentals.” The first is a tune credited to Otis Spann but it prominently features Jody Williams on guitar. Spann doesn’t show up until about the one-minute mark, but it’s well worth the wait: Five Spot/Otis Spann The second is a Bo Diddley tune called Mess Around, which bears no relation to the R&B hit that Ray Charles recorded in ’53. Just another typically satisfying workout by Bo and his band – and another fine example of the undeniable power of the maraca: Mess Around/Bo Diddley

Muddy at Montreux in ’72… during the same trip that resulted in the solo recording of Feel Like Goin’ Home. Kind of an odd assortment of musicians – looks like Muddy’s band teamed up with some Euro-rockers. What the hell… it’s still Muddy.

I’ve played blues harp for years… not on the same level as, say, Charlie Musselwhite, but I can get the attention of a bar full of drunks.

One band I played in never seemed to make it through a gig without some cocky amateur, usually with just one harp, asking if he could get up on stage and jam on some blues. Since I was the resident cocky amateur, I was always put off by these requests… “Go out and start your own crappy white blues band.” Finally, our frontman came up with the perfect response: “Look, we’d love to have you sit in, but every guy in this band plays harmonica, and we’re pretty damn sick of it.”

Which was basically true, underscoring one of the challenges of the instrument and harp players in general. Let’s face it, most of us pick it up out of sheer convenience – who the hell wants to drag a piano up a flight of stairs? And it takes literally minutes for a newbie to play like Bob Dylan or Neil Young. Unfortunately, very few harp players are willing to take the time to move beyond stringing together a few blues riffs and basic tricks and actually learn a melody, no matter how rudimentary it might be. Then there’s Butter… Work Song

Paul Butterfield grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, not far from the tough South Side clubs where blues royalty like Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf held court on a regular basis. Butterfield’s background was decidedly middle-class – as a kid, he took flute lessons from a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which might explain his more melodic approach to the harmonica. But I wouldn’t describe his playing as “pretty.”

In the notes to Robert Gordon’s excellent book “Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters,” you can find a quote from Butterfield that underlines the futility of his parents’ early efforts to turn him into a classical musician:

“What we played was music that was entirely indigenous to the neighborhood, to the city what we grew up in… There was no doubt in my mind that this was folk music; this was what I heard on the streets of my city, out the windows, on radio stations and jukeboxes of Chicago and all throughout the South, and it was what people listened to. And that’s what folk meant to me – what people listened to.”

A wise man (probably someone who wrote the liner notes to an album I no longer own) once compared Butterfield’s style to that of a great prizefighter, which seemed to ring true to me. Always dancing around, bobbing, jabbing, waiting for the right opening for that big hook… you get the point. Here’s Butterfield, boxing his way through a knockout performance on 1972’s “Better Days”… Highway 28

Obviously, by the time Butterfield recorded that number, he’d long been under the spell of his blues idols, especially Muddy Waters and Little Walter. He’s often credited with exposing them to a huge new audience – mainly white college kids who couldn’t get enough of what they were hearing in Chicago blues clubs.

Butter even stole Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm section – bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Sam Lay – back in the early ‘60s to form one of the first interracial blues bands. But he made up for that slight by landing gigs for Muddy and Wolf on Chicago’s predominately white North Side, and later in concert halls on the east and west coasts. And that helped lay the groundwork for their resurgent careers in the late ‘60s and ‘70s.

“Blues With A Feeling: The Little Walter Story,” by Tony Glover, Scott Dirks and Ward Gaines, offers a less-than-flattering portrait of Butterfield and his relationship with his idol Walter:

“(Little Walter’s guitarist) Luther Tucker recalls Butterfield coming to gigs and plying Walter with a half-pint of whiskey, trying to find out how he played certain numbers. ‘You think Walter was a helpful kind of guy who’d show you stuff?’ Butterfield asked. ‘Well he wasn’t, he was a nasty sonofabitch who’d tell you to get the fuck away from him.’” Then the authors claim that Butterfield “may be a less-than-reliable informant… many people found him difficult and arrogant.”

Later in the book, a Chicago blues enthusiast disputes Butterfield’s account of how Walter treated him, noting that Walter loved Butterfield and thought he was a good player. Butterfield, on the other hand, was just “looking for a place where he could perform.” Sound familiar?

Muddy and Butter, from "The Last Waltz"

Even if Butterfield wanted to help him, Walter was too far gone by then (mainly booze) to benefit from his support. But Muddy and Wolf clearly seized the opportunity – especially Muddy, who maintained a long-standing relationship with Butterfield over the years. They played together on The Band’s 1976 swan song, “The Last Waltz” (Muddy’s performance is by far my favorite from the movie). And Butter blows like mad on this cut from “Fathers and Sons” – recorded live with Muddy in ’69… Baby Please Don’t Go/Muddy Waters with Paul Butterfield

Like Walter, Butterfield wrestled with some serious demons during his short life, and he eventually passed away in 1987 due to complications from long-term alcohol abuse. He was only 44, but looked much worse for wear and tear.

Butterfield’s greatest legacy may have been ensuring that a lot more folks listened to the artists who inspired him… guys like Muddy and Wolf and Walter who invented electric blues in the clubs of Chicago.

Nothing can replace the legendary Chess recordings by the originators of Chicago blues. But I’ll put Butterfield up there with the best of the second-generation bluesmen, based on the gritty, hard-driving sound of his harp alone. He also had a soulful voice and, at least in the early years, managed to put together and run bands that simply destroyed the competition – especially the hippie shoegazers they shared the bill with at the Fillmore in San Francisco.

Here are just a few of my favorite moments from albums Butter recorded as both a bandleader and sideman…

Butterfield is probably best known for the recordings he made in 1965 with Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop on guitars, Arnold and Lay holding down the rhythm, and Mark Naftalin on keyboards – basically, his first album on Elektra. Born In Chicago, written by Nick Gravenites, became his signature song… here’s a taste: Born In Chicago

The title cut to Butter’s next album, “East-West,” was a 13-minute Indian-influenced freakout that was first titled The Raga. Written by Bloomfield, the instrumental was their most pronounced departure from the Chicago blues that informed the band’s earliest recordings. It might have been a calculated nod to their fans at the Fillmore – and it sounds a little dated today – but East West definitely has its moments. And I’ll give Butterfield and Bloomfield credit for being so determined to break out of the blues mold. East West

By the late-‘60s, Butterfield had put together a big, 10-piece band with five horn players, including a guy who eventually became a staple on smooth-jazz stations – David Sanborn. You really get the sense of this band’s fearsome reputation on “The Paul Butterfield Blues Band Live,” recorded in 1970 at the Troubadour in L.A. But my favorite moment is Butterfield alone with his harp, on the powerful opening to Everything’s Gonna Be Alright… In just a short minute, he shines a light on all that’s good and right about the Mississippi saxophone. Everything’s Gonna Be Alright

“Better Days” (1972) isn’t often listed among Butterfield’s best albums, but it’s one I always come back to – mainly because it brings him together with blues chanteuse Maria Muldaur, the great guitarist Amos Garrett and New Orleans piano legend Ronnie Barron. The album shows the full range of Butterfield’s talent, moving seamlessly from roadhouse rockers to more meditative blues like this remake of Nobody’s Fault But Mine… Nobody’s Fault But Mine

“The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album” is another underrated gem – one of Muddy’s best latter-day recordings (1975). It’s hard not to like an album with The Band’s Garth Hudson playing blues accordion and Levon Helm pounding away on what sounds like a Civil War-era drum kit. It also features the great Pinetop Perkins on piano. But none of them bring it like Butterfield, who attacks a few of these old warhorses (Caldonia, Kansas City, Let The Good Times Roll) like he’s got something to prove. And maybe he did, because personal problems had derailed his career by the mid-’70s. You couldn’t tell by listening to Butter’s blazing solo on this one… Going Down To Main Street/Muddy Waters with Paul Butterfield

Paul Butterfield on the TV show “To Tell The Truth” – probably around ’65. Sort of a remedial blues comprehension test. I like how the celebrity panel members try to “out-hip” one another with their questions… “Do you happen to know the name of (a jug band) that comes from Boston?” ”Do you know a Negro blues guitarist from Houston?” “What are the instruments in the Modern Jazz Quartet?” Don’t tell me Orson Bean and Peggy Cass smoked dope and hung out in the West Village… my head would explode.

LeBron, post-LeBacle

The Cavs crashed and burned, the team’s fragile chemistry in ruins. LeBron’s making noise about leaving town. The Indians can’t hold a lead, and Asdrubal Cabrera broke his arm diving for a ball. Meanwhile, in my mom’s hometown of Milledgeville, GA, world-class whackjob Ben Roethlisberger is doing his best General Sherman as he cuts a wide swath of destruction through the countryside.

And that’s just the bad news in the world of sports. The economy’s still in the crapper… Dan of The Black Keys is thinking about moving to Nashville (Pat’s already in NYC)… Oh, and HBO’s “Treme” still sucks, for the most part – even though the music is first-rate.

I got the blues, baby, and I got ‘em bad.

Of course, the best antidote is more blues – or maybe a little old-school soul or rock ‘n roll. Anything to get my mind off this sad state of affairs here in America’s heartbreak… I mean, heartland.

Now, I won’t weigh in on the many rumors swirling around the Cavs following yet another gut-wrenching postseason in Northeast Ohio. And I have no idea who will show up to play when the team gets back together later this year for training camp. But I can’t help but think that “the plan” LeBron keeps referring to is all about getting a Ring for the King, no matter where he plays. Meanwhile, the goal of bringing the next major sports championship to Cleveland remains as elusive as Lady Ga Ga’s good taste.

Future home of RCR

Lots of theories about where LeBron will end up. I’m guessing Cleveland is now a long shot, even though the Cavs built the Taj Mahal of training facilities only minutes away from LeBron’s Dubai-scale house, which is just down the road from a large architect’s model of Rubber City Review’s new world headquarters (at right: pending stimulus grant approval). One theory has him hooking up with Dwyane Wade and several other A-listers in Chicago, where they could bring back the glory days of Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen. But I think the great bluesman Jimmy Reed knew all along where LeBron would land – so if you’re from Northeast Ohio, listen and weep… Jimmy Reed

Actually, at this point I’m sort of agnostic when it comes to LeBron and The Black Keys leaving town (in Dan’s case, it gives me another cool place to visit). But I’m also not sure how it would help advance their careers. We live in a world where some punk kid skyping in his bedroom in Duluth can become a global phenomenon. Why would anyone think that someone like LeBron needs a bigger stage to achieve his goal of world domination? Hell, he’s already there. Might as well stick it out in Akron, where livin’ is easy and people pretty much leave you alone. And besides, it’s easier to find a qualified contractor who can maintain a home that’s the size of a shopping mall.

The Tribe? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over seeing them lose the ’97 Series – in extra innings of Game 7, no less – to this Frankenstein creation of a team from Florida. A team with absolutely no tradition. A team that was systematically dismantled the next year by its owner, like he dumped off a bunch of cats on someone’s farm after they killed all the rodents in his house. I was devastated. But I have to admit, I thought of this next song when I was sitting in a beach house in Captiva, watching Game 1 on TV with the snow falling in Cleveland… Muddy Waters

With Roethlisberger, I could take the easy way out and simply play “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but there has to be a more appropriate song… one with a lot of big, dumb swagger – preferably by a band with a strong connection to the Deep South. Yeah, I got it right here. Just imagine this tune being reworked by that big-voiced blonde chick from American Idol. Whatever the hell her name is… Lynyrd Skynyrd

I can come up with a whole slew of songs about economic hardship. How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live, Money Honey, Depression Blues, All My Money Gone, Sidewalks of Chicago, Hard Times Killing Floor Blues… But I get tired of all that bitching about not having two nickels to rub together. In these times of short-selling scam artists and massive ponzi schemes, I want songs of retribution. I want to know that, even though my ill-conceived investments have tanked, some former Wall Street wunderkind is getting passed around federal prison like a joint at a jam-band concert. Time for a sermon from Rev. Scott H. Biram… Scott H. Biram

Then there’s “Treme,” which I already complained about a few posts ago. Fact is, even a half-baked show with great music is better than anything involving real (incredibly annoying) housewives or snotty rich kids from California.

So I’ll try to end on a more hopeful note. Here’s hoping that the Cavs rise from the ashes and the Indians rise above .500 and the South Rises Again and my bank account… well, you get the picture. But when everything seems to be swirling down the drain, the best way to lift my spirits is to play me some funky brass-band music – straight from a city that makes sports heartbreak seem trivial. Funky Liza/New Orleans Nightcrawlers

Everyone’s an expert… Dan and Pat of The Black Keys weigh in on LeBron and the miseries of Cleveland sports (starting at 1:25). Excuse the commercial at the beginning:

How’s that for a blowhard title?

The operative word being “moments”… which speaks to one of several fundamentally different ways that we experience music.

Some folks like it in the background, like aural wallpaper. Now, I’m not going to waste valuable bandwidth trashing smooth jazz, Enya or Muzak. I actually felt a tinge of sadness when I found out that Muzak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year. But I tend to have a hard time ignoring ambient music – I’m always trying to figure out what song is being reprocessed, and whether or not it’s an actual improvement over the original.

Years ago, I was toiling away in a Muzak-fed workplace when I kept hearing this nagging melody… Why is this so disturbing? Then I suddenly realized I was listening to an orchestral remake of Journey to the Center of Your Mind by Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, and my head almost exploded. I found out later that Nugent actually tried to purchase Muzak just to put it out of business. So I’ll give the company credit for following through on this diabolical act of revenge.

Other folks just wanna dance. Nothing wrong with that… In fact, that’s probably a far healthier approach to music than this constant need to analyze every song and identify every conceivable influence.

Some of my more literate friends are all about the lyrics. They trace their musical lineage back to Dylan, who begat the Beatles who begat Elvis Costello who begat a whole slew of contemporary indie poets. Unfortunately, some of these modern-day bards approach things like rhythm and musicianship with an attitude bordering on contempt.

I recently came across a quote from guitarist Geoff Muldaur (Paul Butterfield’s Better Days, The Texas Sheiks) in the Austin Chronicle that seemed to describe where I come out on this issue:

“I’m miserable at listening to singer-songwriters, because I’m not interested in the (singer-songwriter’s) music, and I don’t listen to the words,” Muldaur said. “Zero. I come at it from the music. If the lyrics hold up, if the music is compelling, I might listen to words – if they’re spectacular and draw me in. Take ‘Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You,’ as an example. ‘Love makes me treat you the way I do. Gee, baby, ain’t I good to you.’ That’s it.”

Which brings us to the malcontents at Rubber City Review and other obsessive-compulsive types – mostly musicians and record collectors – who simply can’t get certain guitar licks or horn parts or vocal flourishes out of their heads. Sadly, these retained musical moments don’t go away – they begin to crowd out other basic thoughts, such as those involving food, personal hygiene and the speech patterns of spouses and family members. Help stop this terrible affliction…

OCD-related maladies aside, I’ve always noticed that musicians use these moments as shorthand to describe what they like about a certain song, artist or genre.

When I was putting together my post on Robert Quine, I came across a tribute from an old friend of Rob’s, Procter Lippincott (from the music site Perfect Sound Forever). Here he describes a process that should be familiar to most musicians:

“We never listened to whole tracks together. In fact, on most occasions, as I recall, we listened only to that particular instant on any track that we felt made it great, even breathtaking, in its impact. It might have been A Thing of the Past, for instance, where Shirley of the Shirelles’ voice cracked on the first word of the phrase, ‘Thi-i-s-s is the moment to decide’ (my choice), a syncopated line on ‘Waltz for Debby’ (Bill Evans’ ‘Live at the Village Vanguard’… his), or the pregnant pause right after the head in Power to Love on Jimi Hendrix’s wildly uneven ‘Band of Gypsys’ album, before Jimi cranks up the volume to take another unearthly solo (mutually appreciated). Quine typically was not as accepting of my choices as I was of his, but we kept at it endlessly, searching for our secular epiphany.”

Here’s that moment (and more – I just couldn’t cut off the solo) from “Band of Gypsys”: Power to Love/Jimi Hendrix

In the best spirit of this process, I’ve asked brothers Jack and James to join me in sharing some of our favorite musical moments. I promise to be accepting of their choices – even if I’m convinced they suck – and I look forward to joining them at the upcoming Rubber City Roundtable: “Why Our Opinions About Music Are Much More Important Than Yours.”

Tim: Charlie Parker may seem like an obvious choice, but I wonder how many jazz musicians became junkies after hearing Bird’s ultimate throwdown to his fellow be-boppers? This is from a compilation of his recordings on the Savoy and Dial labels (one Dial collection even included this sample as a separate track, listed as the “Famous Alto Break”): Night in Tunisia/Charlie Parker

Jack: This is one of those slow blues that only a good blues singer can sing. I’m talking about Muddy Waters. With a top-notch band that follows his every breath. “Don’t say I don’t love you, cause I stays out late at night long… You know I’m a country boy and I don’t know what’s going on.” It’s great, but the growl and cry at the end really nails it. Country Boy/Muddy Waters

James: It had to be the mid-’70s when I first heard Reconsider Me coming from a record vendor’s booth at a Pensacola flea market. When I asked who the singer was, the vendor said he thought it might be Tom Jones. “Tom Jones can’t sing like that,” I said. Not even in his dreams. It turned out to be New Orleans crooner Johnny Adams. For reasons I still don’t understand, the song was included in a compilation album called “The Streak,” which also featured that Ray Stevens ode to exhibitionism. I don’t know how to categorize this sound. Swampolitan? I do know there aren’t many vocalists, alive or dead, who could sing with this particular combination of sophistication and scary passion. Listen to Johnny’s bloodcurdling falsetto on the chorus. Reconsider Me/Johnny Adams

Tim: Couldn’t resist another perfect falsetto – this one from gospel singer Claude Jeter, who passed away in January 2009. You probably didn’t read about it in the paper or see it covered on Entertainment Tonight. Which makes sense, because he had one of those transcendent voices (like the previous example) that seem to exist in another world… one that would relegate Madonna Ciccone to a lifetime of obscurity. Here’s my favorite moment – actually, two soaring falsettos by Jeter – from my favorite tune by the Swan Silvertones: Mary Don’t You Weep/The Swan Silvertones with Claude Jeter

Jack: The great James Booker… Is he playing in front of the beat or behind the beat?  You figure it out. He sure is creating a lot of excitement with just a couple of chords. Keep On Gwine/James Booker

James: I Ain’t Got Long has to be one of the most deep and moving performances I’ve ever heard on record, and the story behind it is incredible. A prison warden overheard the legendary Bahamian musician Peter Elliot singing the song in his cell, where he was awaiting execution, and was so moved that he arranged his release. Elliot later fell to his death through the open window of a Nassau bar. The song is performed by a group of Elliot’s friends in the same alley where he died. It’s from the classic collection of field recordings, “The Real Bahamas.” This is as real as it gets… (we’ll just play the whole thing) I Ain’t Got Long/Sam Green and group

Anyone else want to weigh in? Doesn’t even have to be an actual piece of music… I’ll leave you with this little slice of studio banter between Leonard Chess and Sonny Boy Williamson (warning: don’t play this for the kids) as you ponder which nugget you’ll send me for a future post: Little Village/Leonard Chess and Sonny Boy Williamson

Today’s Record Store Day… Go spend some cash at one of the 700 independent record stores left in the U.S. so they can stay open for another year.

Time to dig through the old mail bag and respond to a few comments about previous posts… Most of these comments show up on the blog, but a few others take a more direct route – either via email or in conversations with friends and family members.  And, of course, a few are better left unsaid, either because I didn’t understand them or don’t need explicit instructions on how to pound foreign objects into a certain orifice.

If reader comments are any indication, I could have posted many more Christmas favorites on “Those Chimeless Holiday Classics.”  Here’s a couple… Mark from Owensville believes I overlooked Charles Brown’s Merry Christmas Baby with the enduring line “I’m all lit up like a Christmas tree.”  And Bill from St. Augustine is partial to the Blind Boys of Alabama’s “Go Tell It On The Mountain” – one of those projects that pulled together a small army of special guests from every conceivable genre (Bill Clinton???).  I don’t have that one, but I do have a cut from the Blind Boys’ 2001 release, “Spirit of the Century”… What’s Christmas without a song written by Tom Waits?  (The nasty slide is a little gift from David Lindley.) Jesus Gonna Be Here/The Blind Boys of Alabama

The video of Free with a young Paul Rodgers – from “Superhits of the Seventies (and Pass the Sausage)” – seemed to resonate with those of you who grew up listening to that vitally important sub-genre of music known as “stoner rock.”  Dan didn’t (unless you count G Love and Special Sauce), but he prefers another Free/Rodgers video on youtube – Fire and Water…

Many comments about the Wood Brothers cut from “Loaded,” featured on “Tim’s Top Six.”  They truly are a great find and I have to give full credit to Brother James for turning me on to them.  As I mentioned in the post, I was familiar with Chris Woods’ funky bass on cuts by Medeski, Martin and Wood, but I had no idea he had some Stanley Brothers in him too.  The first Wood Brothers release might even be better than the second, if that’s possible… Here’s one of my favorite tunes from “Ways Not To Lose”: Glad/The Wood Brothers

Young Joscha from Germany thought the opening to Storm Warning by Dr. John had an influence on Dan’s Heartbroken, In Disrepair from his 2009 solo release, “Keep it Hid.”  I’ll let you be the judge.  Storm Warning is featured on “New Orleans Nuggets,” and here’s the video for Heartbroken – filmed near Marfa, Texas, with members of Hacienda, who hail from San Antonio… and My Morning Jacket’s Patrick Hallahan, who’s a Louisville boy.

Joscha complained about my poor treatment of his beloved Led Zeppelin in “Superhits.”  But I fully admit to being under the spell of the blimp back in my high school days (hey, I’m from Akron).  By the way, I recently saw Lucinda Williams and her hot-shit band on Austin City Limits… Right in the middle of her tune Joy (from “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”), they launched into the signature riff from Zep’s Heartbreaker.  It was freakin’ awesome!  Here’s another riff that’s been rattling around in my head for 30-some years… The Ocean/Led Zeppelin

In his comment to ”Little Walter, By the Book,” Jose mentioned that his dad turned him on to Walter by playing him Muddy Waters’ Forty Days and Forty Nights.  Here’s Walter’s scorching harp solo from that number… Forty Days & Forty Nights/Muddy Waters with Little Walter

Finally, Danny Horn liked the cuts featured on “Superhits” but wanted to hear a little more of the late Jesse Ed Davis, the guitarist with the slippery, soulful touch on Taj Mahal’s early albums.  Here’s Jesse Ed stretching out on a cut written by Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson from The Band and featured on Taj’s 1969 release, ”Giant Step”…  Mister Davis! Bacon Fat/Taj Mahal with Jesse Ed Davis

Newly promoted to Keyboard Correspondent for Rubber City Review, Brother Jack is back with this look at the wonderful Otis Spann – a true giant of the blues piano…

If you were looking to broaden your musical horizons back in the Sixties, Ann Arbor was a great place to visit.  I was there at the time doing grad study in mathematics at the University of Michigan, but there were plenty of distractions.

Skip James

Ann Arbor was a hotbed of folk music in those days, thanks to places like the Ark Coffeehouse and the Canterbury House.  Blues players were everywhere – especially guitar pickers who played in the style of Mississippi John Hurt and Rev. Gary Davis.  Great performers like David Bromberg would breeze through town on a regular basis. There were “hoots” and jam sessions where you could test you own skills.  Skip James, a true blues legend, played at the Canterbury House once.  What a treat.  He was known for his guitar playing and keening voice, but he also displayed a unique piano style.

I played the acoustic guitar, but piano was my instrument.  Commander Cody was playing locally then, doing his best Jerry Lee Lewis on the ivories.  His act was good and gave me some inspiration, but guitar players ruled.  It was hard to find a piano to play, but there were a few places where I could sneak in and practice.  In my mind, I knew it was possible to get that great blues feel on the piano, but I had no idea how.

I discovered an Otis Spann LP at my favorite record store near the Michigan campus.  The album was in a series called “Archive of Folk Music” and the notes on the back of the album proclaimed that  “folk music cannot be ‘manufactured.’  Most of these efforts are rather slick and facile popularizations of either traditional tunes or ‘composed’ folk tunes.  Though pleasant, these are not folk music.”

This was the philosophy of the times, so I bought the album and quickly found that Otis was my man.  This was deep blues.  Couldn’t get much deeper.  I dropped the needle on vinyl and began trying to uncover the secrets of his playing.  It was a great sound.  The guitarists could have their Blind Blake and Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie McTell.  I would take Otis Spann.

In keeping with musical trends in the ‘60s, record companies emphasized the folk traditions of the city blues, and Otis was folk, certainly not manufactured.  He learned his craft from the local Mississippi players and from his mentor in Chicago, Big Maceo Merriweather.  He didn’t stray from the three-chord basis of the blues, but he found new inventiveness within it.  He was slick and facile in the best sense of the words, and earned a reputation as the greatest of the Chicago blues piano players.

Otis Spann was born in Mississippi but moved to Chicago about 1946 – part of that influx of workers and musicians from the South, the same one that brought Muddy Waters to the city.  Otis began playing with Muddy in 1951 and remained a steady presence in his band until he was replaced by Pinetop Perkins in 1969.

He came from a tradition where the piano player was king of the juke joint, but adapted well to the city blues where he had to compete with amplified guitars and harmonicas.  He became Muddy’s mainstay.  Muddy gave him some space and, with his powerful attack, Otis drove the band on many of the tunes.   Listen to how he kicks off I Feel Good and how Muddy starts whooping when the rhythm starts cooking. I Feel Good

To show how the style of Otis developed beyond his mentor Big Maceo, I put together a makeshift jam session where Maceo plays the first chorus of Worried Life Blues and Otis plays the second. Worried Life Blues/Big Maceo and Otis Spann

Otis filled the spaces with blues scales and moved easily from the top to the bottom of the keyboard.  He also clearly learned a few things from another great Chicago piano player who came up from the Delta, Sunnyland Slim.

Spann’s version of Worried Life Blues is from a 1963 session in Copenhagen for Storyville records.  Once again, we owe the Brits and Europeans a great debt for preserving our music heritage (all is forgiven, Brits – 1776, Herman’s Hermits, Engelbert Humperdinck and all that).  The Storyville tracks have been assembled under different titles, and can be found on iTunes as Blues Masters, Vol. 10.  Otis played mostly solo on these, and without drums or guitars to compete with him, he opened up to show the breadth of his vocal and piano style.  These are my favorite recordings of Otis Spann.  Hear how the gentle tapping of his foot and his subtle bass line drive the rhythm better than any drummer. Love Love Love

I loved it when Otis played rumbling solos down in the bass, something you rarely hear from other players.  The smoothness of his playing brings to mind only one other person for me:  Jimmy Smith on the organ. T.B. Blues

If you want to play like Otis, there is help.  First, learn how to play the piano.  Next, get the musical transcription of his solo from the song Diving Duck.  This is from an excellent book of transcriptions called “The Best of Blues Piano,” by Todd Lowry, published by Hal Leonard.

Here’s where things get a little more technical than usual for RCR, but I’ll be brief.  Otis is very hard to transcribe.  He didn’t think in terms of three or four notes to the beat, but played however many notes he felt like squeezing in.  Take a look at part of the transcription of what he’s playing with his right hand.  Don’t worry if you can’t read music – you’ll get the basic idea.

Counting 4 bars to the measure, you can see it shows sometimes 7, 8, 9 or 10 notes to the beat and a lot of notes altogether for 9 measures, especially if you include glissandos and tremolos.  Here is what it actually sounded like (only the first part of the solo is notated): Diving Duck

So Otis wasn’t a pianist or composer in the European sense.  He was just playing the blues.  He was the blues.

With his easy rhythm and poignant lyrics, Otis had a unique style.  As opposed to Muddy’s braggadocio, Otis preferred lyrics like “I been walkin’  ‘side the river, just me and myself alone,” or “If you got to leave me, baby, please set me free.”  But he could still barrelhouse with the best.  It’s easy to see why he is called the Sweet Giant of the Blues.

The story of Otis largely follows the story of Muddy, and there are some great anecdotes about Otis in the book “Can’t Be Satisfied, the Life and Times of Muddy Waters,” by Robert Gordon.  (This book is also mentioned in the Oct. 21 RCR blog “Little Walter, By the Book.”)

Booze finally took its toll, and Otis Spann died in 1970.  He was only 40.  Muddy said of Spann, “There is no one left like him who plays real, solid bottom blues like he does.  We’d better raise another before it’s too late.”  Sunnyland Slim, on the other hand, lived and performed until he was 87.  If Otis had taken better care of himself, maybe he’d still be around delivering that solid bottom blues.

Thanks to footage available on youtube (and also the film “Piano Blues” by Clint Eastwood), you can still be astounded by vintage Otis Spann on video.  I can’t help but think, where was iTunes and youtube when I was digging through the Ann Arbor record stores?

A final note… The only person I know of who took lessons from Otis Spann is rock ‘n roll survivor Al Kooper.   In his book “Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards,” he recounts getting several two-hour lessons from Otis in exchange for dinners.   I hope Al will someday tell us what he learned… maybe write another book called “Otis Spann in Six Easy Lessons”?

Greetings from Carefree, AZ… where they like to point out “it’s a ‘dry’ heat.”

I’m using this brief respite from the Rubber City as an opportunity to read yet another book about an important musician – even though I’ve gone far beyond the recommended lifetime quota for such books.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend any of them to people who don’t share my obsessive-compulsive approach to American roots music.  Because once you strip away the “who played with who, what label, which session, who produced, what instruments/amplifiers/accessories were used, how impaired were the players, which substances were abused”… there’s really not that much left to talk about.

But as a service to my readers who aren’t inclined to care about such things, I’m offering this layman’s guide to a few of my favorites:

Hope that helps…

I’ve just finished “Blues with a Feeling: The Little Walter Story,” by Tony Glover, Scott Dirks and Ward Gaines.  And this one’s an especially tough read for those who have only a passing interest in the world’s greatest harmonica player.  It’s stuffed with details on virtually every session that featured Walter as a leader or sideman – not to mention countless gigs where he at least showed up to play (Walter was notorious for letting other harp players take over in the middle of his gigs so he could go somewhere else to drink or get high, or both).  But once again, I’m hooked… and I can’t believe it took me this long to read about the single most innovative and influential bluesman that Chicago ever spawned.

I’ve played blues harp in bar bands for years.  I learned by ear when I was a teenager, playing mostly bluegrass with my brothers and fumbling along to third-generation blues tunes covered by rock bands like The Allman Brothers Band and Derek and the Dominoes.  The latter’s version of Walter’s “Key to the Highway” is perfect for harp neophytes – nearly 10 minutes of the same chord changes, a steady mid-tempo groove, and no flashy harp player to discourage you. Key to the Highway — Derek & The Dominos

But like any self-respecting blues hound, I eventually decided it was time to sniff out the hard stuff, so I borrowed a Little Walter album that kept staring at me when I’d visit my sister – a two-record set that had this bizarre illustration on the cover of Walter in a tux, standing in front of what appears to be a shipwrecked bar.

But this record was the motherlode for aspiring harp players.  And if you felt the least bit insecure about your playing when you dropped the needle on this one, you’d surely toss your harmonicas out for good after hearing Walter’s unbeatable tone and technique.  Here’s one of my favorite solos from Walter’s own recordings… My friend Andy calls it one of his “runaway riffs” – a good way to describe Walter in full flight. Mellow Down Easy

Walter’s powerful instrumentals seemed to openly mock his competitors – a useless exercise when you consider he really didn’t have any peers.  And his stuff sounds just as fresh and vital today as it did when he first shook up the blues world back in the 1950s.

He saved some of his best riffs for tunes he recorded with Muddy Waters, and my favorite is his solo on Muddy’s I Just Want To Make Love To You.  I’m amazed he pulled this one off – it’s so outside and alien, light years ahead of what anyone was putting down in Chicago at the time.  Maybe there’s a reason he named one of his instrumentals Flying Saucer… On this one, it sounds like he beamed himself into the studio, straight from the spaceship. I Just Want To Make Love To You — Muddy Waters

Walter’s own singles became jukebox standards – both the instrumental Juke and the hugely popular My Babe hit number one on the nation’s R&B charts.  And he soon eclipsed Muddy as the most popular artist on the Chess Record label.  In the book, harp player Billy Boy Arnold tops the blues academics in describing Walter’s appeal: “…a girl told me once that ‘Little Walter sound like a hipped-up Muddy Waters,’ meaning the same music, just hipped up some – and she described it right.  He was just wailing, he was a swinger; a lot of beautiful solos.”

Of course, fame can be fleeting, and Walter soon was standing in the shadows of the new rock ‘n roll artists who were taking over the Chess studios – especially Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley… although “The Bo” (as he liked to call himself) and Walter had great respect for one another and even recorded the following classic together: Diddley Daddy — Bo Diddley

Walter was a rough character who seemed to literally fight his way through life.  He was beaten up by more than a few racist cops, but also stepped into a number of scrapes he could’ve easily avoided, including several with jealous husbands.  He eventually succumbed to full-blown alcoholism and died in 1968 when one too many blows to the head sent a blood clot to his heart (“Blues with a Feeling” includes at least seven or eight wildly different accounts of Walter’s last scuffle).

The book’s epilogue offers this sad and sobering look at Walter’s demise: “Maybe when he saw how fleeting the fame and fortune was, he lost respect for his own gift – and for himself. And once he began his prolonged downward spiral, circumstances and his own choices seemed to conspire to bring it to its inevitable conclusion.”

Walter on Disc:

If you’re starting to search for that two-LP set, rest easy — there’s plenty of Walter available on disc…

In a more perfect world, every new homeowner in America would receive a free copy of Walter’s “Best” — part of the Chess 50th Anniversary Collection.  Hard-core fans can dive into “The Complete Chess Masters: 1950-1967,” a five-disc, 126-track set on Hip-O Select.  However, it includes a number of duds and alternate takes and none of the 50-plus prime cuts Walter recorded with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers.  But Walter was a jazzman at heart and never played the same solo twice, so the alternates can be supremely rewarding for more dedicated listeners.

Given the fact that Walter lived and played on the edge, there are few surviving videos showing him in action.  I’ll leave you with these two.

The first is a nice, if brief, career overview that played at his 2008 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (oddly enough, as a sideman)… You can find it here.

The second appears to be the only available video on youtube of Walter performing live, with Hound Dog Taylor in Europe (1967).   Now I’m a big fan of both Walter and Taylor, but they weren’t the most compatible musicians.  Walter was an avowed disciple of jump-jazz great Louis Jordan, while Taylor clearly modeled himself after the far-raunchier Elmore James (for prime Hound Dog, check out “Release the Hound,” which includes live cuts recorded at various Cleveland dives).  In several interviews, Walter didn’t hide his disdain for Taylor’s down-home style.  But the video remains a fascinating look at two great bluesmen, playing it the only way they knew how.

Next up: “Me and The Bo,” or how I survived my brief stint as a Bo Diddley sideman.