Blues Unlimited: Essential Interviews from the Original Blues Magazine

Blues Unlimited: Essential Interviews from the Original Blues Magazine

Blues Unlimited: Essential Interviews from the Original Blues Magazine

Blues Unlimited: Essential Interviews from the Original Blues Magazine

Paperback(1st Edition)

$35.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Usually ships within 1 week
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

British blues fan Mike Leadbitter launched the magazine Blues Unlimited in 1963. The groundbreaking publication fueled the then-nascent, now-legendary blues revival that reclaimed seminal figures like Son House and Skip James from obscurity. Throughout its history, Blues Unlimited heightened the literacy of blues fans, documented the latest news and career histories of countless musicians, and set the standard for revealing long-form interviews. Conducted by Bill Greensmith, Mike Leadbitter, Mike Rowe, John Broven, and others, and covering a who's who of blues masters, these essential interviews from Blues Unlimited shed light on their subjects while gleaning colorful detail from the rough and tumble of blues history. Here is Freddie King playing a string of one-nighters so grueling it destroys his car; five-year-old Fontella Bass gigging at St. Louis funeral homes; and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup rising from life in a packing crate to music stardom. Here, above all, is an eyewitness history of the blues written in neon lights and tears, an American epic of struggle and transcendence, of Saturday night triumphs and Sunday morning anonymity, of clean picking and dirty deals. Featuring interviews with: Fontella Bass, Ralph Bass, Fred Below, Juke Boy Bonner, Roy Brown, Albert Collins, James Cotton, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Joe Dean, Henry Glover, L.C. Green, Dr. Hepcat, Red Holloway, Louise Johnson, Floyd Jones, Moody Jones, Freddie King, Big Maceo Merriweather, Walter Mitchell, Louis Myers, Johnny Otis, Snooky Pryor, Sparks Brothers, Jimmy Thomas, Jimmy Walker, and Baby Boy Warren.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780252080999
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Publication date: 10/20/2015
Series: Music in American Life
Edition description: 1st Edition
Pages: 496
Product dimensions: 6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Bill Greensmith is a photographer from England now living in St. Louis; producer of CDs for Red Lightnin', Ace and Rhino Records and consultant for numerous record companies; former co-editor of Blues Unlimited (1974-87); and former host of a weekly blues radio program on KDHX, St. Louis (1989-94). Mike Rowe is a longtime blues broadcaster, reviewer, writer, and compiler, and the author of Chicago Blues. Mark Camarigg is publications manager and former assistant editor for Living Blues Magazine and chairs The Center for the Study of Southern Culture's annual Blues Symposium at The University of Mississippi.

Read an Excerpt

Blues Unlimited

Essential Interviews from the Original Blues Magazine


By Bill Greensmith, Mike Rowe, Mark Camarigg

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-08099-9



CHAPTER 1

Freddie king


Born on September 3, 1934, in Gilmer, Texas, Freddie King's stature has grown in full measure since his premature death in 1976. Moving to Chicago in the early '50s, King fell into the burgeoning blues scene and learned guitar in the clubs. King's first record, "Country Boy," was a duet with Margaret Whitfield on the small El-Bee label in 1956. He signed with King Records in 1960 and released a succession of hits, many of them catchy up-tempo instrumentals, including "Hide Away," "San-Ho-Zay," and "The Stumble." King relocated to Texas by the mid-sixties, and after appearing at the Texas Pop Festival in 1969, his reputation in the U.S. rock scene grew after recording with rock luminaries Leon Russell and Eric Clapton. Unfortunately, King was not well served on the reissue market until the 1993 Ace Blues Guitar Hero compilation and the more recent Bear Family box set, Taking Care of Business, 1956–1973, that appeared in 2009, spurring King's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

In the following interview, author Mike Leadbitter reminds readers of King's Chicago influences on both his guitar and voice. King's sound is best understood in comparison with his Chicago woodshedding influences — namely, Eddie Taylor, Jimmy Rogers, and Robert "Junior" Lockwood. Leadbitter also notes that King's vocal style resembles Buddy Guy more than the smoother style of a T-Bone Walker. This comparison to Chicago performers highlights that the birthplace of an individual is nowhere as impactful as the influences upon an artist in their formative years when applying themselves to the craft.

This interview also marked the end of an era at Blues Unlimited. Mike Leadbitter became sole editor of the magazine in 1973 and juggled that job while simultaneously editing a new British music journal, Let It Rock, covering jazz, country, and soul. This article appeared in Blues Unlimited issue 110 in October 1974 as Leadbitter's last interview published in the magazine. He died just one month later.

— Mark Camarigg


Madison Nite Owl Freddie King Interview

Mike Leadbitter

Blues Unlimited #110 (Oct./Nov. 1974)

Though somewhat out of favor with his followers at present, 40-year-old Freddie King remains cheerful, taking life as he finds it. As far as he's concerned, he's just a straight blues singer and likes nothing better than reminiscing about the good old Chicago days when there was a blues joint on every corner and men like Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Eddie Taylor reigned supreme. He might live in Dallas today, but the Windy City has a strong claim on his soul and that's where he learned almost everything he knows about a guitar.

He knows he's good and refuses to let modesty stand in his way when recalling with glee how he would go around "cutting heads" on Sunday afternoons. He once liked nothing better than the chance for a guitar battle, but became notorious for the speed with which he dispatched opponents. This caused lesser men to hurriedly leave the stage as soon as they saw his bulk heave into sight, and legend has it that even Blues Kings paled when he and Earl Hooker entered a club together. Such incidents, however, took place in the early sixties — the chart-busting days — when Freddie, as a musician, was at his peak. The preceding years were as tough for him as they were for anyone else.

Like most of his contemporaries, Freddie King is just a plain old country boy. Born on a farm outside Gilmer, a small town near Longview, Texas, he was raised in a rural environment and his first experience of city life came at the age of 16, when he defied migratory patterns and moved North East rather than West. Shaking with cold, he arrived in Chicago during the December of 1950, clutching a Harmony guitar and wishing he'd never left the South. But he had little choice in the matter: his mother was determined to join her relations in that town.

Freddie's grandmother lived on the West Side and the King family settled there at Bishop Street and Adams. The first thing they all had to do was find work, but big for his age, Freddie had few problems. He just said he was 18 and was quickly hired by a local steel mill. In spite of getting his legs scarred in an accident, he stayed on at the same place for seven years relying on the money earned for the buying of new guitars and other fresh and exciting indulgences. Then, amazed by the amount of music to be heard in his new home, he really fell in love with the blues and at night ran wild, walking the streets to hang out at neighborhood bars though well under age. Wherever there was music you'd find him, and during 1951 he began to polish his technique, borrowing freely from men like Eddie Taylor, Jimmy Rogers, and Robert Jr. Lockwood while developing a pretty unique blues style first learned in Texas. In the habit of really hitting the strings on his acoustic box in an attempt to achieve more volume, he found it difficult to come to terms with electric models and eventually found himself abandoning the softer, mellower, yet amplified approach of his heroes in favor of the harsher more astringent sounds beloved by other youngsters of his age. His became the "new" Chicago blues and he would join the ranks of Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Syl Johnson, and so many others, building his reputation alongside theirs. How this all came about is quite fascinating and best left to Freddie to explain.


We always kept two or three guitars around our house in Texas all the time. They all played — my mother, my uncles, they all played guitars. Leon King — he got killed in a car wreck when I was 11 years old — he taught me a lot of stuff. I played in church and in school — there was nothing going on in school that I wasn't in. Lots of guys played around there. There was one guy about the same age as my mother. They called him Shorty, Shorty Brown. He was a piano player and every time they give something like a minstrel show in school, they got him to play piano. He and I would play together. He could dance, too, and he's still living in Longview.

I'd always go to Chicago when school was out, after I started high school. My grandmother, my mother's brothers and things, they lived there. So when I finished school, after I was 16, we all just went there. I was playing like Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters when I got to Chicago, but Jimmy Rogers and Eddie Taylor were different. They really inspired me. I stayed around them all the time. Every time they look up, I'm coming. If I couldn't catch one, I'd catch the other. They'd say, "Don't you ever sleep?" There was a guy in Chicago, identical to T-Bone Walker, L. C. McKinley. He was playing the same stuff and he used to go as "T-Bone Jr.," but, see, I wasn't thinking too much of that, because I wanted to play like those other two cats. That was the style I wanted to play in. Open key of "E" or "A." Those were the only keys I played in then. Those clamps — capos — used to call 'em "cheaters" — I seen where they changed keys with them. So I went and bought me one. Same thing Eddie was doing, I was doing, too.

Eddie was playing at the Kitty Kat on Madison Street then with Willie Foster and Floyd Jones. I'd go in there, but so many people crowded in, the cat told me not to come in anymore as I was under age. His name was Mike, too. But I'd slip through all this crowd anyway and make my way around to the bandstand, where I could sit and just watch Eddie. And then I was at a backyard party once and he brought his whole band down there to jam some numbers. So Eddie was showing me how to play in "E" and I said to him, "Say, man, where you live?" He acted like a fool and gave me his address, and after that I was up his house so much they thought I lived there.

See, after that I worried Jimmy Rogers at the clubs. He was showing me how to use these picks. He was playing with Muddy Waters and in intermission he'd go to walk off and I'd grab him, make him show me this and that. And then there was Robert Jr. Lockwood. I worried him pretty bad, too, but you couldn't really worry Robert Jr. He liked helping people. He loved showing people. Now, this is when I really got into the T-Bone Walker, B. B. King style. Robert had a weird sound like them and I wanted to learn some of that, too. So we got to talking and laughing and he was showing me how to make these chords and Johnny Shines did, too. They said if I could play in the keys they showed me, I could get rid of the clamp — throw the son of a bitch away. They showed me how to play without it. I'd sit up all night practicing, but it was hard for me to do that. But finally, I caught on to it.

I was 17 when I got my first electric guitar, and Willie D. Warren (mistakenly referred to as "Willie Wine" in earlier Freddie King articles) signed for it (acted as guarantor). It was a Kay, but it got stolen and then I turned around and got me another one. A Sunnyland guitar — they're made by Kay too, but that got stolen, too. And I lost my amplifier at the same time. So then, I got me another one. A friend, Lee Edward Brown, signed for me to get it. He worked for the Curtis Candy Company, he didn't play anything. I kept that one for about a year and then I got me a Les Paul (Gibson) and that's when I was playing with Earlee Payton — '56, I started playing with him.

The first guy I ever played with was Sunnyland Charles at a place called Red's Playhall on Madison. He was with a harmonica player named Johnny Dee — really good harmonica player. Charles plays guitar and, really, his was the first electric guitar I played. When I first met him he had some cousins living in the same building as me, and he came in there with his guitar and I said, "Let me see your guitar." He said, "Come go with me," and he taken me to a club called the Spot. It was on Maple and do you know who was playing there? It was Johnnie Temple and Baby Face Leroy. I'd never played electric before, but Charles said, "Get up there and play one." I said, "I'm not good enough to play with those cats, man," but they pulled me up there anyway. A couple of months later I met Charles again and he said, "Hey, man, I'm playing down on Madison there. Why don't you come by?" So I started playing with him. I was 17 years old.

About a block down from where Charles was playing at Red's was the Kitty Kat. I met Sonny Cooper there before I did Sonny Scott. See, I'd go from Red's to the Kitty Kat, and on down the street from there was Ralph's Club, where Memphis Slim was playing, and he had Lee Cooper (guitar) with him. They had a really good band, but on every corner at Damen and Madison there was a band playing. There was the Cedar Club, the Royal Revue — King Kolax was there. And over the other side of the street was the Paris Club, where Danny Overbea was playing. Then I'd go over to Lake Street — go straight across — and there's Elmore James playing over there. Elmore had Johnny Jones's band. There was Ernest Cotton, Boyd Atkins blowing the horns, and then there was Odie Payne. But Odie was working with Jimmy Rogers for a while, and they used Kansas City Red until he came back. Didn't have no car then. I was walking, man, I was always walking. I wasn't frightened of anything. They call it skid row down there, but it was home to me.

After Sunnyland Charles, I was with Sonny Scott (drums) at Red's Playhall. Me, Sonny, and Jimmy Lee Robinson (bass). This was in '52. Then I went to Sonny Cooper (harmonica). There was me, Willie D. Warren (bass guitar), and Jesse (drums). This was at the Kitty Kat, but after it closed up, we moved down the street to the Be Bop Club, which was owned by the same people. So all of us started playing down there. We really didn't have no band then, we was just jamming with each other and stuff. Then I started back to playing with Sonny Scott and Jimmie Lee and we got a good thing together then. This is when I really got into playing lead, 'cause I didn't have a harmonica or anything to help me out. I had to just stand out in front and really keep everything covered up. This is when I really learned to finger and bend and put stuff in there like I'm doing now. I didn't have no help.

I was playing with Scott when I first met Payton. We was playing cocktail parties then, and on Sunday afternoons we'd play at the Stadium Sports Club, right in front of the Chicago Stadium. One band would play there awhile and then another band would get up and play awhile, you know. Payton came in with his band one day, and after I met Payton I started playing with him at the Heatwave, upstairs on State Street. I played with him one night there, on a Tuesday, and on Sunday afternoons we played at the Cotton Club. They had two Cotton Clubs — one on the South Side and one on the North Side, and the owner was Youngblood, a piano player. Count Basie and Joe Williams was there, and they didn't have no blues until we came in. We packed 'em in. So at first I was playing two days with Payton and I had my regular thing with Scott and Jimmy Lee. Then finally I went with Payton (full-time). Smokey Smothers was with him — he joined a little before I came — and he (also) had Mojo Robert Elem (bass) and T. J. McNulty (drums). I guess I played with Payton longer than with anyone else. I was with him about a year.

That lady, Miss Margaret Whitfield, owned the Ricky Show Lounge. She recorded us in '56 and the record was supposed to have been leased to Chess. But there was some trouble with the union along there, so Chess didn't want no part of it and we let (lawyer John) Burton have it. That wasn't me playing guitar on it. No, it was Robert Jr. Lockwood, and Billy Emerson was on piano. The record didn't do a thing on account of the trouble they had, but really it wasn't a very good record, was it? [Note: Freddy is referring to El-Bee 157 — "Country Boy"/"That's What You Think" — issued under his name. Margaret Whitfield is also heard on side one, and the other sidemen were Earlee Payton (harp), Mojo Elem and T. (Thomas) J. McNulty.]

Then I went with my own band — I didn't go back to Texas until 1963. Mojo and T. J. came with me from Payton's band, and we played with just the three of us for about a year in '58. But then I got a big band. We got Abb Locke, saxophone player; Hal (Harold) Burrage played piano; and for a while Lil' Mason was singing. And John McCall was another vocalist I had and so was Dee Clarke. We stayed together until I started recording in 1960. We played the Casbah on the West Side and Mel's Hideaway Lounge and the Squeeze Club. Mel's was on Loomis — Magic Sam and all of us used to play there. We also played the Happy Home — that was on the West Side, too — and Willie Mabon and Eddie Boyd also played there. In '58 I just quit work (at the steel mill). I was playing music every night and averaging about $300 to $500 a week after I'd paid the men off. I was charging $500 for a big club dance then, 'cause my band was really popular.

I'd been trying to get with Chess for two or three years (when I signed with Federal), but they wouldn't record me, because they said I sounded too much like B. B. King. But they used me on sessions. Then I'd been knowing Syl Johnson since '56, and he introduced me to Sonny Thompson, who was working for Federal (King's subsidiary). Syl recorded for Federal before me, but they sort of lost interest in him after I came along, and I wasn't very happy about that, 'cause we had been friends a long time. I knew Mack (Thompson), Syl's brother, before I knew Syl. Also Jimmy Johnson is his brother, too. Jimmy has records, too. All three of them used to play together. When I made the first four hits, Syd Nathan (owner of King-Federal) was nowhere around. He was upstairs, but he didn't come down. We got a good sound and Sonny Thompson was a great blues player. The others (on the session), Bill Willis (bass), Philip Paul (drums) and them, was all studio musicians. They lived in Cincinnati.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from Blues Unlimited by Bill Greensmith, Mike Rowe, Mark Camarigg. Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword Tony Russell, ix,
Acknowledgments, xiii,
Introduction Bill Greensmith, xv,
Regional Blues Mike Rowe, xxix,
I. CHICAGO, 1,
Freddie King, 3,
Jimmy Walker, 13,
Louis Myers, 22,
James Cotton, 45,
Red Holloway, 65,
Fred Below, 92,
The Old Swing-Masters, 106,
II. DETROIT, 151,
Baby Boy Warren, 153,
Big Maceo, 162,
Walter Mitchell, 172,
LC Green, 185,
III. ST. LOUIS, 187,
Jimmy Thomas, 189,
Joe Dean, 261,
Sparks Brothers, 278,
Fontella Bass, 291,
IV. MISSISSIPPI, 305,
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, 307,
Louise Johnson, 315,
V. TEXAS, 323,
Juke Boy Bonner, 325,
Dr. Hepcat, 335,
Albert Collins, 345,
VI. WEST COAST, 359,
Johnny Otis, 361,
Roy Brown, 368,
VII. RECORD MEN, 401,
Henry Glover, 403,
Ralph Bass, 416,
Index, 435,

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews