Hound Dog Taylor Interview (Circa 1974)

WES RACE INTERVIEWS HOUND DOG TAYLOR circa 1974!

Wes Race - Hound Dog, when did you start playing?

Hound Dog Taylor - In 1935 around Tchula, Mississippi

WR - Who'd you see and who were your influences?

HDT - All Of Them. Names like Elmore James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Jimmy Rogers, Skip James and I saw John Lee Hooker. We all came through there together.

WR - Where'd you play, in what type of places?

HDT - No amplifier's or nothing like that. We just played in the house; Called it Barrelhouse.

WR - Why'd you decide to come North?

HDT - Well that's a different story you see. At that time a colored man didn't have no breaks. If anything would be said about a colored man that's what white men would do with it. It was a lie in the first place. About five hundred of them around my house lookin' for me. It was about a white woman. So I cut out. Straight to Chicago at 41st and Indiana around '43 or '44. I been here ever since.

WR - Was it hard trying to adjust yourself to big city life.

HDT - No, I didn't have to adjust myself to anywhere. I've always had a mind of my own cause I raised myself. See I didn't have no daddy, I had a step daddy when I was nine years old he put me out; so, I've got my own mind. People say this and that, how come the whites don't like the black, anbd black don't like the white. Well, I got my own mind; everybody's alright with me. I never had no problem. When I was a kid I'd hit the highway down south with my guitar on my back. I played for whites and I played for colored. See ain't nobody ever done me wrong. Everybody seem the same to me. Just like I look at you. Person to person you know.

WR - So how'd you get up to Chicago?

HDT- Took a Bus. From ten at night til seven in the morning. I'd hid out and laid down in the highway by the weeds. I got on the bus and went to Memphis and sat on a little bench you sat in on that side where the Negro is supposed to sit They had soft seats with a lot of space on the white side. 

WR - Why'd you come to Chicago?

HDT - My sister was already up here. So I got off at Rooosevel t road. Rode down to her street on some of them red street cars. The old ding dong ones.

WR - So you worked a couple years up here didn't you?

HDT - I worked at an ice cream factory on West Madison for about three years making butterscotch. Went to Americn Television til about 1957.

WR - "Who were some of the musicians you saw up here in Chicago in the early 1950's."

HDT - "Muddy Waters was on Ashland at the Zanzbar." Little Walter was with him and Jimmy Rogers too. Boy, they had the place jumping. & 35th and Indiana, Smitty's Corner, was jumping too. The Plantation was on 31st where the Original Sonny Boy got killed. And there was a place upstairs on 47th where I met Little Walter. Around that time I worked with a harp man named P.T. Hayes. He weighed 260 a great big cat. We played on the South side mostly. 

WR - Did you ever get over to The Blue Flame?

HDT - Yeah, I played there along with Buddy Guy and Magic Sam. Buddy Guy was playing there, I was playing down the street at a plac called Peppers. Buddy was sittin' outside playing; he had one of those long chord things. I told Buddy I" got a cat that can tear you up." He said bring him here. We went to the West Side and got Magic Sam. Magic Sam came over and tore him down. Ever since then we Been buddies. Anytime you see Buddy Guy he'll say "where's Hound Dog at?" Magic Sam before he died that cat could natural born wail. He was one of the best. After that day they were buddies and they knew that one couldn't mess with the other cause he coldn't do nothing with him. And I went in their with my little junk and tore them all down. Now I'll tell you one thing - Where you go people can play a whole lot of guitar but they don't put anythng in it. When you're playing music and you play the way I do , you watch the people's feet behind the table. If you're playing a tune and nobody's doing anything but look at you then you're not getting to them. Stop it take another tune and when you look under the table and see them people pattin' their foot When you see that foot movin, man, you keep it there. You can play so much guitar til the strings jump off. But if you aren't gettin' to the people you ain't doin' nothing. Wen you see that foot a movin' you got it made. That's what I look for. I've walked into a place where cats are wailing down and nobody doin' anything you know. I don't care what you do. You can blow your breasts out and make a guitar and you won't get a hand no way. But when you get them movin' you can make a mistake, cover it up,and they'll still be with you. Now you take this boy over here on California and Madison Guitar Jr. (Lonnie Brooks)) Now he's like me. He'll play a song about two minutes. But he'll keep playing til he finds out what the people's wants. And that's where he'll keep it at. He's been there about four years, he's been doing something right.

WR - How Long have You Been Playing At Florences Lounge?

HDT - Since 1968. And on Sunday's it's so crowded you can't get in. You see when I first started playing,about about two to three people came in. Next Sunday 10 or 15. Then 25 -30. She was losin' money at first but she kept it up. The average Negro if he doesn't make a thousand dollars right then no deal he won't take it. 
 
WR - When did other musicians start coming in?

HDT - About six months after we started the crowds started coming in. They'd come in and try to take me. And the more they tried to take me the more they were building the place up. Until Florence dies I'll be there. Some cats would go in there and try to play under me(for less money) She still wouldn't do it. She said I got my band with Hound Dog. Some people, after you build their place up, will let you go for a cheaper band, But the crowd is gonna fade away Because they don't want to hear that band yo hired. They want to hear the originals. So boy when I came up from Mississippi I was ready.

WR - How'd you get your nickname Hound Dog?

HDT - Well that's another story. Say, you don't want that in the interview case it was bad. You know if you do somethings wrong then they'll say something about you. Just like if you were going with two sisters how'd you feel? 
 
WR - How do you write your songs like "Give Me Back My Wig."

HDT - I just lay in bed at night. Now I got a new song "Sadie." I was just layin' in bed at night asleep and sat up and looked around and I could hear it so good like somebody was playing it. Then I got my guitar and I played it. I heard all my songs coming at me in my head. Now you take this boy Elmore he beat me to Chicago. He put out all my stuff, I did that stuff in Mississippi. He went to school for music like B. B. King. After he heard me he changed his style. People say I play like Elmore. Well he plays like me. I been playing that way all my life. Now I'll tell you one thing. You find me anybody that can pull a slide like I can. Cause I been doin' it all my life. I can pull slide like nobody's ever heard about. The average cat can't do that. Now you take John Littlejohn he plays some of them couuntry blues songs but he can't make it.

WR - What about some of Chicago's other Slide Guitarists?

HDT - J. B. Hutto can play some of it. but sometimes he's weak on it. Slide's gotta be strong. If you don't now what you're playing it can mess you up. Now take Homesick James but he sometimes gets off and it's hard to get back on. Earl Hooker now he can play just like B. B. King do. Earl Hooker was good. He was next to me.
  
WR - What do you think of soul music?

HDT - Good, yeah I love it.

WR - Then why don't you play it in the clubs?

HDT - See, I don't have anybody to play it with. Brewer Phillips can't play soul music. Now Ted Harvey can drum it. See, I just put my tremolo on & I can sing it alright. Now if I had a bass man. But right now I got two guitarists and a drum. If I had a bass man too I could play it just like anybody else.

WR - How do you feel about white guys playing the blues?

HDT - I'll tell you one thing that cat from overseas (Long John Baldry perhaps) real big cat came down to Peppers, he didn't have no shoes and he had a buddy of average size they're the white blues I heard. They was outasite. Now as far as white people playing blues, they havn't got that Oooomph or that thing to it. They can play it but something is gonna be weak the voice or something They're getting to it though. The white is turning black and the black is turning white. You take the average Negro nowadays he's playing something out of his style And the white is coming into Blues. I'll tell you one thing if the Negro keeps on messing up the white is going to take the Blues from the Negro. And that's all the Negro has left for him is the Blues. If he gives that up he won't have nothing left man And the Negro can play the Blues, Jack. Cause he's had the Blues all his life. That's his only style You go over to where I'm working tonight and some cat'll try to get up there and sing something he doesn't understand himself. You take B. B. King. He's about the biggest blues man in the world right now. He's playing his music the Blues. So you stay with your style and you got it made. Look at Louis and Dave Myers. If Lois would really play the Blues he'd be out of sight. Look at what he plays though. Don't nobody come around him. He ain't playin' nowhere. When he gets on stage He doesn't play his style he doesn't know what he's doin'. So when you play the Blues you can get high. Now you take Count Basie or somebody note reading this thing or Louis Jordan (he couldn't note read either) but they were playing a different style but it was their own bag understand. So you can take somebody else's tune but change it to your own style.

WR - You've mentioned that you played piano.

HDT - I first started out playing piano in Mississippi. Used to haul it on a flat wagon and keep it in a picnic lot. The only trouble is you can't carry one of them big Grand's with you to save your life. I started playing guitar cause you can take it anywhere you want to take it. Piano's too heavy, you put it on your back and you ain't goin' nowhere.
  
WR - How do you like the piano players you're hearing in Chicago today?

HDT - Otis Spann was about the best. Now this bushy head cat who played with me this summer (Big Moose Walker) is real good. Sunnyland Slim is real good. But his music hasn't moved since 1931. Just like my guitar player now Brewer Phillips. He just plays 1932 on up.

WR - You mentioned efore that you played with Blues ladies?

HDT - That was in the 1950's with Big Maybelle out on Kedzie Avenue. But it got so bad they had to let them go. You know how colored peple is. I played with her about two months. Last time I played with her was out on South Chicago at the Clock Lounge. Willie Mabn's playing out there now.

WR - You like playing for white audiences? 

HDT - Yeah, I want to get up on the north Side so bad it's pitiful. You know where we were that Sunday. Up at Alices Revisited on Wrightwood. I think Johnny Twist might e playing there now I wanta go north so bad it's a cryin' shame.

WR - What about when you were over in Europe?

HDT - Yeah it's real nice but you can't have no fun. Over there they talk about coming to the states to have some fun. But over there you don't know nothin' brother. Fun's out of the question. All you do is go play your gig go back upstairs in the hotel and go to sleep, or look out the window. You make a little money. If you go to the lobby they'll just look at you. Nobody comes to you and says 'come on let me show you the town.' They come over here and there's aways somebody to show them around. When they come here they've got a better break than we've got over there. Room cost 50 to 60 dollars a night and just stay four hours. Now Hamburg Germany is the best place you can go. Hamburg's alright. You can meet a ot of friends there you know. Now the rest of the paces are okay but they'll talk to you and you'll beat your brains out to understand what they're saying. You can't order anything to eat or a shirt to wear and always have to call somebody in to understand what they're talking about. When yo get on the bandsand and play all they go by is the music. Cause they don't understnd what you're saying anyway. Now they like the sound they go for it. If you put the music to them and they like it boy you got a standing ovation....

WR - Who Went To Europe With You In 1967?

HDT - Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Skip James, Bukka White, Koko Taylor, Little Walter, Odie Payne, Mahalia Jackson and her group a whole bunch of us.

WR - Who was the best harp player you've ever heard?

HDT - Little Walter, that's it and that's all of it brother! One thing, now people say you can't take it with you, well he sure took it with him. A whole lot of people say Shakey Head Horton, Big Walter, was best but he couldn't touch him. See Big Walter ain't got the Ooomph but he could blow don't get me wrong. Now Wolf can blow his thing but he doesn't have it. Little Walter can blow anything any tune he wanted. Now Willie Dixon is taking 'Horton with him everywhere he goes but he's using the man. I'd used to work down here at Rose & Kelly's & I'd put something on Big Walter he couldn't take. Now over seas with Little Walter when I'd shake it he'd take every drop of it. If I pushed him he'd pull it right back to me. If you put it on Shakey head too much he'll get mad and quit. Now young Carey Bell's bad too. Carey's got a different thing of his own But he wants everybody to stop and let himblow his harp. Sometimes when he let's himself down you can fill in but he don't see it. If you get too loud he'll stop blowin' and turn around and look at you. If he makes a mistake it's alright cause I cover it up. I can take my slide and cut that harp anytime I get ready. Little Walter wouldn't do that. The harder you played the harder he'd blow that harp. We was in Frankfurt Germany - Koko Taylor was singing, Little Walter looked at me and I can always get a nod you know. Walter looked around at me and I taken off, Koko was messin' up. Somebody had to take over. When I hit about four bars I put it down then Little Walter took off. Koko got mad, she turned around and started off the bandstand. The man in charge talked her into going back up but when she got back up there they started throwin' paper at her. But she was wrong, after Walter had taken over it was going to come back to her anyway.

WR - When you first recorded your 45's how'd the record companies approach you?

HDT - I was playing for Cadillac Baby on 47th and Dearborn and so he said "Hound DogI like that song. I want you to put out 'My Bab's Coming Home' and 'Take Five.' I said 'anytime.' So the next week we went down to Jackson Street on the third floor and we had a whole audience just like a tavern and I was pretty high anyway; we'd had a fifth of whiskey. Oh Man, we had a ball. The man recording the thing was out there drinking with us too and we about didn't have time to cut the thing so Cadillac said come one let's cut Hound Dog while he's feeling good. I went down and cut some for Chess before he died. But you know Chess he'd got so big he got everybody he already wanted. After he died Willie Dixon tried to run it bt he wasn't educated enough. You've got to have good sense for them things. His son came in and I cut a few things for him ("Sittin' All Alone" "Watchout" "Down Home Special") with Shakey Horton, Lafayette Leake, Willie Dixon, Lee Jackson and others. 

WR - I think your drummer Ted Harvey's one of the best drummers around. How come he's never recorded before?

HDT - Yeah he is about the best now. Fred Below's goin' down. He drinks too much. He can't hold his whiskey now. Below used to be the best in town. Now as drunk as Ted gets he shuts his eyes and keeps chewing that gum. He can work out for you. As long as he hears you he knows exactly where it's at and what's to be done about it. Now take Phillip he's good but he doesn't know where it's supposed to be at when he gets drunk; he's out of it. He's liable to do anything or go anyway.

WR - Where'd you meet your present band at?

HDT - I met Phillip arond August on West Madison. Ny son Leo, he plays guitar, some of the best you ever heard, Leo Taylor. We were playing and Phillip was in the alley drinking whiskey. I asked my son to come play with me and he said 'I don't want to play but I got a boy that's good. We went out and found Phillip sitting outside near a post drinking whiskey. I worked him that night and the cat was pretty good.

WR - Where has yor present Houserockers group played in the city?

HDT - Everywhere! We played on live Broadcast's for Bg Bill Hill at The Copa Cabanna Club. We left there and went over and broadcast over on Cicero. One night we broadcast way south of the city at The Phoenix Club but they couldn't hear us on the station. Big Bill Hill used to be big in Chicago.. Everybody was listening to him in the day time. But all you can do is hear him at night now. I think he messed up with hs boss man. So they gave him a rotten deal lettin' him broadcast late at night when everybody's supposed to be in bed. They oughta forgive him if he'd apologize. When he was on the air he told the boss where to kiss at.

WR - Will you ever go down South again?

HDT - If Bruce my booking agent sends me down there. I won't go on my own. I ain't been South since the 1940's. It's different now. I wouldn't have no problem down there though. At that time back in the 1930's and 40's it was rough. When I was down there I picked cotton for about two years. Then I started chauffering I first drove a tractor. When you'd put me on a job I'd work. I burned up the man's tractor. So he flagged me down and yelled "cut if off." Then I started driving a truck. Finally I got to chauffering with white shirt and necktie. I wasn't getting paid nothing about two to three dollars a week. From sunup to sundown. After that trouble started I had to cut. You see, his son before he was married I'd drive for him at night. He was courtin' this chick and I would take them in the hills and everywhere. And she would have a buddy. I'd take them to parties. I couldn't go in you know. I'd sit out in the car. And this chick kept runnin' to the car. So I had my jug with me; corn whiskey you know. One night she came, out opened the door, and jumped in there. There wasn't no difference. I don't know who detected it. Somebody must have been outside so that's where the trouble started and I had to cut. I took them home but next night with all those people around it was out of sight. I was in the woods looking at them.

WR - Were were all your friends at that time.

HDT - Ain't no friends about it. Nobody'd back you up. Everybody'd run like scared rabbits. That time a white man could go into your house grab your woman even if she was sick, drag her out of bed, and make her go out in the field. And you better not say nothing. Now that's why it's so bad right now. See a lot of people up here are from Mississippi and they'll take it out on white men up here when they oughta be taking it out on people down there. Take you now. There's a lotta blocks you can't go on here. That's wrong. Why get hard on somebody you don't even know? At that time you couldn't even speak to one. But I played for them around Lexington and Durant. They'd come and get me sayin' "Boy come on." When I'd get tired I'd go in back by myself and drink my whiskey. They were doin' the barn dance then jumping up and down like fools. Looked just like monkey's kickin' their heels. Then they'd take me home. But I didn't mind it as long as I got my jug no way. Sometimes they'd give me two dollars that was big money. Sometime people don't understand that a Negro's got a different mind, they don't see it. It'll be a thousand years before they educate them the way they want them to be. Some Negroes, once they get educated, just try to help themselves. If he knows more than I do he's gonna keep me down there. They say on Tv that a Negro's gonna be President. No, not in the next Thousand years. Ain't no way possible. Some Negroes ain't got no sense. They just get mad at you and shoot you. I wouldn't even vote for a Negro for President cause if he was elected the world would go upside down.
  
WR - What about if Martin Luther King was alive?

HDT - Now that's a different story. Look here, Martin Luther King could have run it but he didn't have the weight behind him to do it. Now you take Jesse Jackson. He's pulling the people's leg, man. Jesse Jackson's a con man.. He talks about everything under God's sun except negro neighborhoods. They'll throw paper and cans around and bust your window, steal your battery, then knock you in the head. He won't say anything about it. He won't say let's get together. Let's stop this. Let's try to be human beings. If all the people didn't know me you couldn't come over here, they'd run you ragged just because of your color. I haven't heard him say anything like that. You take a man who's got five or six kids who get jumped on walking home by them big hat son of a guns called the 'Panthers or The Black Stone Rangers how'she gonna eat? Jesse hasn't said nothing about that at all.

Many thanks to Wes Race...

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

How the blues brothers behind Chess Records made all the right moves

Leonard and Phil Chess's legendary Chicago label helped invent rock'n'roll with Ike Turner, brought us the minimalist blues of Muddy Waters, and provided a direct influence on the young Rolling Stones

Elijah Wald

The Guardian, Saturday 6 November 2010

Have they got blues for you: Leonard, Phil and Marshall Chess Photograph: Chess Family Archive

Frank Zappa once said that the best years of rock were when records were produced by "cigar-chomping old guys who looked at the product that came and said, 'I don't know. Who knows what it is? Record it, stick it out. If it sells, all right.'"

Leonard and Phil Chess were prototypical cigar-chomping, old-fashioned record men who took a chance on music they didn't understand. Jewish immigrants from Poland, they got into the record business more or less by chance: Leonard bought a liquor store in an African American neighbourhood on the south side of Chicago, and did well enough that he opened a small nightclub called the Macomba Lounge. It was a rough ghetto bar, patronised by prostitutes and drug dealers, but from the start it was known for having good music. In the late-1940s, that meant it had jazz groups playing bebop, pop tunes, and mellow blues ballads. That was what the better-paying black patrons preferred to hear, and when Leonard got involved with a small local label, Aristocrat Records, that was what he intended to record.

It was only after the first few records went nowhere that he took a chance on another kind of musician, a Mississippi singer who was too raw and country-sounding to have pleased the crowds at the Macomba. In fact, when Leonard Chess first heard Muddy Waters sing I Can't Be Satisfied, in a Delta growl backed with a whining electric slide guitar, he couldn't imagine it pleasing anyone. "What's he saying?" he asked. "Who's going to buy that?"

Fortunately, his partner in Aristocrat, Evelyn Arons, suggested that some of the black southerners who had moved north in search of jobs might enjoy the sounds of home. So Chess pressed 3,000 singles, they sold out in a day, and six decades later Waters's recording is remembered as the first masterpiece of electric Chicago blues.

In a movie – and there have been several based on this story – Chess would have instantly seen the light and devoted himself to creating further blues masterpieces. But in real life he was not a patron of the arts; he was a businessman trying to cut popular hits. By 1950 Arons had been replaced by Leonard's brother Phil and the label was called Chess, but most of its releases continued to be by jazz saxophonists.

The brothers were small-time "indie" record men making a quick buck from the poorest, least respected people in America

Little Walter. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Meanwhile Waters was also trying to reach a broader audience, adding a drummer and harmonica player to his live shows to create a tight, tough band. He was frustrated when Chess refused to mess with a winning formula and insisted that he keep making stark guitar-and-bass records like Rollin Stone, a one-chord chant that was archaic even by the standards of rural Mississippi. Neither of them could have imagined that a dozen years later five lads in London would like that record enough to name a band after it.

That is the paradox of the Chess story. The brothers were not musical visionaries; they were small-time "indie" record men making a quick buck from the poorest, least respected people in America. But their cheaply recorded, bread-and-butter discs of local street musicians and bar bands still sound as fresh today as they did 60 years ago. By failing to be timely, they succeeded in being timeless.

They were also lucky, and unusually loyal to their artists. That loyalty did not prevent them from playing some tricky games with publishing and royalty payments, but it meant that down-home bluesmen like Waters and Howlin' Wolf continued to make records long after other indie labels had switched to a trendy teen style called rock'n'roll.

Leonard Chess and Waters had a particularly close relationship, and it served both of them well. When Waters finally persuaded Chess to record his full band, he incidentally brought the label its biggest blues hit-maker: Little Walter was barely out of his teens, and reshaped the course of blues harmonica by amplifying his instrument and playing it like a jazz saxophone. It was a fresh, hip sound, and in 1952 he cut an instrumental called Juke that stayed at the top of the R&B charts for eight weeks. Then, in 1955, Waters introduced Chess to an unknown songwriter from St Louis named Chuck Berry. In retrospect, the list of artists who were associated with Chess in that first decade forms a pantheon of electric blues and blues-influenced rock'n'roll: Waters, Wolf, Walter, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Berry, Bo Diddley. There were some startling one-offs as well: In 1951, a teenage Ike Turner recorded a romping boogie-woogie called Rocket 88 at Sun Studios in Memphis, soon to be the birthplace of rockabilly – but Sam Phillips had not yet started the record label that would spawn Elvis Presley, so the disc appeared on Chess. When Presley hit, Chess got its own white rock'n'rollers, Dale Hawkins and Bobby Charles. Many of the label's biggest hits in this period came from doo-wop groups.

When people talk about the "Chess sound", though, they are not thinking of rockabilly or doo-wop, or even of the brilliant soul records the label produced in the 1960s with Etta James, Fontella Bass and Little Milton. They are thinking of the stripped-down blues discs that, despite changing fashions, always remained among the label's mainstays.

It was because Mick Jagger had a couple of Chess LPs under his arm that he was approached by an erstwhile schoolmate named Keith Richards

Fontella Bass. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Once again, that fame is in a large part due to decisions that at the time were simply efforts to wring a few more dollars out of a marginal style. By 1957, down-home blues singles were no longer hitting, but the Chess brothers had made pretty good money with their first LP, the soundtrack album for a forgettable teen movie, Rock, Rock, Rock. So, since reissues of old material were cheap to produce, they put out "best of" sets by Muddy Waters and Little Walter. The anthologies did not sell particularly well, but it was all clear profit, so over the next few years Chess recycled older tracks by Wolf, Williamson and John Lee Hooker as well. Their core audience was still buying singles, but some middle-class jazz and folk fans were beginning to get interested in blues and picked up the albums. As a result, when the Newport Jazz Festival put on a special afternoon of blues in 1960, it included a folkloric segment, a jazz segment, and a fiery electric set by Waters and his band.

The LPs' most significant influence was even less expected. American listeners thought of Waters and Berry as coming from different generations and styles, and the fact that both were on the same record label was irrelevant. In the UK, there was far less African American music to choose from, so the Chess albums were coveted keys to a mysterious, faraway world. A bright 18-year-old named Mick Jagger ordered them directly from Chicago, and it was because he had a couple under his arm that he was approached by an erstwhile schoolmate named Keith Richards.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Chess Records owes its legendary status to that chance meeting on a Dartford train platform. Its British acolytes provided it with a unique identity, and today we associate Chess with the handful of brilliant artists whose work was adopted and recycled by the Rolling Stones and their peers.

According to Leonard's son Marshall, who for five years managed the Stones' record label, his father and uncle were unimpressed with the British groups. But the one thing the Chess brothers never argued with was success.

MARSHALL CHESS Son, employee and boss

Photograph: Neilson Barnard/Getty

"South Michigan Ave was called Record Row – there wasn't only Chess: Vee-Jay records was across the street, with five or six different distributors. We had a narrow two-storey 1920s Chicago building. The offices were on the first floor and the studios were on the second floor.

"In the front there was a waiting room – a wall with a window in the door, because a lot of people who came to Chess records weren't happy. Like, 'Why isn't my record a hit?' Billy Stewart, the R&B artist, pulled out a pistol and shot the door because they wouldn't let him in quick enough.

"We were dealing with blues artists … 80% of them were drinking. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of calling people 'motherfucker', and fighting. Blues artists, often you could give them $2,000 on Friday and they'd be broke by Monday. Then they'd come in and say, 'You fucked me – where's my money?' You couldn't be an angel and run Chess records in the ghetto in Chicago.

"My father was the A-type aggressive personality; my uncle very laidback. He had a big fishtank in his office, smoked cigars. They divided up the artists almost by personality. Phil was more sensitive, and produced the doo-wop records. My father was in there with Muddy Waters and Etta James. They were tough Jews. You had to be. It was like the wild west, to be white in the black ghetto in that era. You were put down for even doing business with blacks. When I used to take the money to the bank, it was in a paper bag, and on my way there I used to pass a liquor store/bar, and we used to talk about whether there was blood on the sidewalk outside that day. People carried knives then, not guns.

"My favourite artists were Etta James, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry – they used to send me to take him out to breakfast. I was fascinated that he would always order the dessert first – always the strawberry shortcake. Guys like Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf were natural stars, but when their records became hits, it seems like they sucked that in and their charisma grew and grew – it's fed by their stardom.

I got a quick education. Blues artists were primarily interested to know if I got any sex. What does a guy ask a kid? They're not going to ask 'How's school?' Muddy Waters used to ask me, 'Get any yet?'

The Stones came to Chicago to record – the one I spent most time with was Brian Jones. The first time I drank hard liquor out of the bottle was with those guys. I remember driving Brian Jones to his hotel – he had that long hair. No one in Chicago had hair like that. Kids were screaming 'Homo!' at us.

The films about the label? At first I hated it. My Uncle was bothered by it – my father didn't die that way. But Beyoncé was in Cadillac Records, and she's such a big star, now everyone knows about Chess records. It gets the history in to the mainstream. They remember it was important at the beginning of rock'n'roll." Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

 

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Richie Unterberger: Billy Boy Arnold talks about Bo Diddley

http://www.richieunterberger.com/arnold.html

Richie Unterberger
				Welcome to the website of Richie Unterberger, author of books on music history and travel, and reviewer of too many albums to count for various books, publications, and databases. Whether you've found my address in my latest books, arrived here via a link from another site, or just typed in my name for the heck of it hoping to find me on the Internet, I'm glad you're checking it out.

Billy Boy Arnold

His name isn't well known, but few Chicago blues artists have been as intimately involved with the city's blues scenes over the last five decades as Billy Boy Arnold has. One of the first Windy City blues singers who was actually born in Chicago, Arnold was learning harmonica from the original Sonny Boy Williamson in the late 1940s, before even entering his teens. By the early 1960s, he was performing with an unknown Bo Diddley on street corners, playing the classic stop-and-start harmonica riff on "I'm a Man." A stint as a solo artist on Vee-Jay in the 1950s yielded some fine sides, especially "I Wish You Would" and "I Ain't Got You," both to be covered by the Yardbirds when Eric Clapton was in the band. Arnold had only sporadic opportunities to record as a leader from the 1960s through the 1980s, but a deal with Alligator Records in the 1990s boosted his visibility to its highest level for forty years.

When did you first start playing with Bo Diddley?

Around '51. Over on Maxwell Street they played on the street weekends. These were unprofessional guys, mostly. I heard that some of the guys like Muddy Waters and those guys played on the street corner over on Maxwell Street in the early forties, it was real popular to play on the streets around Maxwell Street. 'Cause it's an open market. Most of those guys hadn't recorded as a professional. But it wasn't common to see people just playing up and down the street around the South Side, but every now and then you might see Bo Diddley, like a young group, he wasn't playing clubs, and that was one way of making some money. I heard Earl Hooker used to play on the street corners too. But it wasn't common to walk down the street and see somebody playing on the street.

When I first started playing with Bo, he was playing blues, like doing Muddy Waters tunes, he didn't have any originals at the time. He made up songs, you know. He played a rhythm boogie-woogie type of guitar, and then he played some of the kind of Latin beats that he was known for later. But mainly he was trying to play boogie-woogie blues, same as Muddy Waters, "Catfish Blues" and stuff like that.

He was the type of guy that was always--he wasn't what you'd call a straight blues player like Muddy Waters or Jimmy Rogers. He always had his own little gimmick way of playing, and his tunes were different from most of the other guys. He made up some tunes, and he played the hambone beat on the guitar and things like that. But he doesn't say, I'm gonna write any special songs for that especially. He already had "I'm a Man" and a couple of other tunes, but it wasn't like he said the song "Bo Diddley" wasn't even in the picture. That was created on the spot in the studio. The Bo Diddley name, the song, didn't even exist. He didn't go in the studio and say, I got a song called Bo Diddley and I'm Bo Diddley. His name wasn't Bo Diddley, it was Ellas McDaniels.

How did the song "Bo Diddley" come about?

He was playing the hambone beat, as I said. He was singing, "Papa gonna buy his babe  a diamond ring," and playing the hambone beat. And I suggested, why don't you say Bo Diddley? That's how that name came into the picture. 'Cause instead of saying papa gonna buy his babe a diamond," why don't you say, "Bo Diddley's gonna buy his babe a diamond ring." That's how that word, and that's how--I wrote some of the lyrics on the song, about three of the verses. And we made up on the same song on, just as me suggesting. Why don't you say Bo Diddley gonna buy his babe a diamond ring. Because there was a guy at Indiana Theater, which had Midnight Rambler shows on Saturday night. And his name was Bo Diddley, he was a comedian. And they had Butterbeans & Susie, Big Bill Broonzy. Every Saturday night at midnight, they had what they called a Midnight Rambler. Memphis Minnie would play there sometimes, Big Bill Broonzy played there. They'd feature one major blues star every Saturday night.

The first time I heard the word Bo Diddley, I was playing with him on the street in 1951. And the bass player said, "Hey Ellas, there go Bo Diddley," talking about this guy that played the Indiana Theater. And I thought that was the funniest word in my life, I just cracked up. I never forgot that name, Bo Diddley.

So we was doing this recording thing. We had "I'm a Man," we had which was later changed to "You Don't Love Me, You Don't Care," and we had a song called "Little Girl," and we had a song called "Little Grenadier." He had the Bo Diddley type of rhythm, the hambone rhythm on a guitar. He was singing, "hey dirty mother"...and we had to make up a lyric, 'cause that kind of lyric wouldn't have went on the record. Leonard Chess wanted to know, what did Bo Diddley mean? He thought that was a derogatory word or something, 'cause he had never heard it. So I explained that it meant a comical, bow-legged type of a guy. We didn't know--we made the song up, as I said I wrote three of the verses. I was too young to capitalize on getting half the song. I didn't even pay any attention to that. When the record came out, to our surprise, the song was "Bo Diddley," and to our surprise, he named the artist Bo Diddley.

We figured that he might use the word Bo Diddley for the song, but we didn't know that he gonna call the artist Bo Diddley. We thought the record was gonna be Ellas McDaniels and the hipsters singing "Bo Diddley." When we saw the record, it was "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley. So that's how the word Bo Diddley and the song "Bo Diddley" came about. It was like a fluke, you know. It wasn't something that was made up in his hands.

It was a hit record because of the beat and the guitar. It ain't nothing but the hambone beat, actually. But he's playing it on the guitar with the tremolo. It had that organ effect, and the words was comical. The fact that it was called Bo Diddley might have helped.

What was the atmosphere like, recording at Chess?

When we did the Bo Diddley session, Leonard Chess directed Bo Diddley like a solo act. He would tell him where the solo should come in, and where the singing should come in. And he worked with the artist, like, Play it man! Give me more of this and more of that! Whereas at VJ, they were more laid back. You came in and whatever you had, you just sit down and write it down, so to speak. And that was that.

I was much younger than Bo Diddley. He was about eight or nine years older than me. Leonard did say, he didn't like Little Walter when he first met Little Walter, he told me that. Leonard thought I was a cocky, smart-aleck type of kid. He told Bo he didn't like that harmonica player. Not the music, but my personality. So Bo Diddley told me...see we went there, both, to record. I wanted to record my stuff, he wanted to record his stuff. Bo told me, well, Leonard don't like you, maybe you better go to another record company. And I said okay. And that's why I went to VJ. When Leonard found out that I did, he say, you know, when I first met you, I didn't like you. When I first met Little Walter, I didn't like him. Meaning that he had changed his mind. But it was too late, 'cause I had recorded for VJ.

How did you get set up with VJ as a solo artist?

'Cause when we did the second Bo Diddley record, which was called "Diddley Daddy," that's how that came about. I said if you don't like me, heck, I'll go to another company. And I wrote a song called "Diddy Diddy Dum Dum," and that was supposed to be Bo Diddley's second record. We were playing [live], and I was singing and playing the harmonica like on "I Wish You Would," and Bo Diddley was just playing the guitar. Leonard was there, and he told Bo Diddley, "that's your next record." When they came by for me to go the studio, I was downtown at Universal recording for VJ. But they didn't know it. So Leonard told Bo Diddley, wait till we get Billy tomorrow, and then we'll record it. So when I came to the studio, Bo Diddley started singing and playing, and I was playing the harmonica. And Leonard said, wait a minute, let Billy sing it. And I said, I can't record, 'cause I already recorded for VJ. I had recorded "I Wish You Would," I had changed the lyric, but it had a similar beat and I was using the same harmonica thing. That's how I got from Chess to VJ.

How did "I Wish You Would" come about?

As I say, I wrote the song "Diddy Diddy Dum Dum." And I told VJ I had a song that I wrote for Bo Diddley. And they said, okay. So he told me, why don't you change the lyric around? So I went home and wrote "I Wish You Would." The only reason why I made a record was the Bo Diddley beat. Because I was playing with Bo Diddley at the time. I had no intention of ever capitalizing on Bo Diddley's beat. I had wrote this song, "Diddy Diddy Dum Dum," and I was playing the harmonica like I did on "I Wish You Would." That's how "I Wish You Would" came about. See, Bo Diddley's "Diddy Diddy Dum Dum" went bawm-bawm, bawm-bawm, bawm-bawm, bawm-bawm-bawm, bawm. Well I had Jody Williams, a more advanced guitarist, and he was the same age I am, so he was (sings riff faster). So then I'd made me get a label for the rest of my life with a Bo Diddley type of song. Which I had no intention of ever doing. I was a straight blues guy. I didn't want to be capitalizing on no Bo Diddley type of thing. But once you do something, you're stuck. That's how I got labeled with the Bo Diddley type of thing. Bo Diddley's stuff was rock'n'rollish, it wasn't straight blues, and when I did "I Wish You Would," and it had that similar type of beat, that just throws me in the same pot with Bo Diddley, 'cause everybody identified the song as a Bo Diddley type of song. But I had no intention of ever doing anything like Bo Diddley, 'cause that wasn't my style of music, and I didn't play the guitar like he did. That's his music. But I wrote the song, and he said Leonard didn't like me, and so I went to VJ, and that's what happened.

What do you think were the main ways the Chicago blues scene changed since you started in the 1950s?

In the fifties, it was real hard, electric blues. Muddy Waters in his heyday in 1950 and '51, Little Walter's harmonica was blasting and really on  Muddy's records, which was 75 or 80% of the success of Muddy's records is Little Walter's harmonica playing. That's my opinion. Walter made "Juke," I think, in '52, and that launched him with a hit record. Electric blues and harmonica and Muddy's type of country singing and low-down blues was at its pinnacle at that time. In fact, you couldn't even get a job in a club unless you had a harmonica player in the band. Harmonica players were popping up from everywhere. All up and down the little small clubs on Madison Street, South side, West side, you could hear that harmonica blasting on the amplifiers. The two guitars strumming behind 'em. 'Cause that was the thing. And if you had a saxophone player in the band at the time, nobody wanted it. The saxophone players couldn't hardly get jobs. And piano was just about obsolete. There was a few piano players around, like Sunnyland Slim, Henry Gray, and Otis Spann. Spann and Henry was about the best. Elmore James featured piano, but most bands didn't have a piano.

See, piano started losing ground in the late forties. You must remember that this music changed drastically from 1940 to 1950. Pianos were on their way out in the late 1940s. Piano dominated blues music in the twenties and thirties and til the late forties. See, acoustic blues that original Sonny Boy Williamson was playing, Big Bill Broonzy, and Memphis Minnie, they all used piano. Piano was a dominant instrument. It wasn't guitar. Listen to Big Bill's records, his guitar, it was like fill-in guitar, it wasn't the type of guitar like B.B. King, T-Bone Walker was doing. You listen to T-Bone Walker's records in the forties and everything, the guitar stands out. It's the main instrument. But he had horns and background stuff like that, but T-Bone's guitar stood out like B.B.'s stood out in the fifties. He used piano and everything, but piano started out dying in the late forties. By the fifties, most of those clubs didn't have pianos in 'em. The new clubs that were coming up, they didn't have no pianos. Most of the major old clubs had pianos, old uprights. But a lot of times, the piano wasn't even used, 'caused the bands was using two harmonicas and two guitars, and drums. That was the way the music had changed from, say, 1948 to 1950.

The sixties was pretty good with the blues, blues went on until the late sixties, early seventies, hardcore blues, the style that was going strong in the fifties started fading away more to rhythm and blues type of stuff. Rhythm and blues started taking over, harmonica, Little Walter was sort of like losing ground as king of the harmonica players. And when he was started losing ground, everybody else--the popularity of the harmonica and the two guitars was sort of fading out in '67, '68. The hardcore blues, the type that Muddy and Wolf then was playing, it had this stronghold on the South Side and the West Side and some of the clubs, but it wasn't nearly as popular as it had been in the fifties.

The country blues wasn't as popular in Chicago in the sixties as it was in the early fifties. More bands starting coming in with horns, started coming back. Earl Hooker then was using the organ and horns and harps wasn't in demand, as it was a few years earlier. And Muddy, in the late sixties, Muddy's popularity fell off to the point where he was struggling to hold jobs, and playing for less money, just to keep a band together. Then in 1965 we started playing on a North Side club called Big John's, they didn't even know who Muddy was. We started playing up there, Paul Butterfield was playing there, and I started playing up there in this place on certain days. Then Junior Wells and Buddy Guy and the Aces got a job up there. Then they discovered who Muddy was, and Muddy worked up there for a while. Then Muddy started going on the road. It was more or less, the blues was changing over to a white audience. And Muddy didn't play around Chicago. Wolf played around Chicago continuously, five nights a week, six nights a week, or whatever. But Muddy had lost popularity. Muddy wasn't a hard worker; he relied on his band. Wolf was a dynamic showman, and he kept recording singles, and Muddy's singles was tapering off. Little Walter's popularity wasn't as great as it had been. Junior Wells was playing at clubs, he played a lot of rock'n'roll type of clubs. Then he finally wound up at Theresa's.

A lot of people started going to Europe in the seventies, mid-sixties and seventies, eighties. They wasn't making any money, they was taking advantage of 'em, rippin' 'em off. Go over there, work for a month for peanuts.  A lot of the guys just wanted to go over to Europe to play, and the European people found out they could get you for nothing. They were playing big auditoriums and packing them in, and people here was telling them, I have to pay 'em too much money. The middleman was probably taking all the money. The people that was getting you over there might have been getting more money than you're getting. So it's always been a ripoff in the blues, as far as the artist is concerned. Everybody made more money than the artists.

We were playing for all-black audiences in the sixties and the early seventies. Now it's all white audiences, it's 100% white. All the blues clubs that are functioning is on the North Side. People who like blues are white audiences. Blacks sort of like, they've heard it, and it's an economical thing too. Most of the black people that used to support the blues became economically uptight. So they couldn't support the clubs, and the music, and it might have been because they heard the music, so it wasn't nothing new. The white audiences, it was like new music to them. They had never heard this type of music before. They heard it, liked it, sort of revived it, and now it's worldwide.

When I was recording for VJ, I was totally inexperienced. The VJ guys were the best musicians that I ever recorded with. Henry Gray, Jody Williams, Earl Phillips, and people of that caliber. The Alligator Records are pretty good, they came out pretty good. Most of the original blues singers, like Otis Spann, Sammy Lawhorn, all those guys, they're no longer around. So you have to use other people to make the blues now.

Jody Williams is a very underrated guitar player.

Jody started on the scene as a very young kid, and he played with Howlin' Wolf, recorded with Howlin' Wolf. He was one of the top guitar players around Chicago. Then he went on the road with Bo Diddley in the late fifties, and he wrote a song called "Love Is Strange." Mickey & Sylvia stole the song. Stole his guitar licks, all those guitar licks on "Love Is Strange" was Jody's creation. He was playing that guitar with Billy Stewart before Mickey Baker ever heard it. They heard Jody playing that guitar style at the Apollo Theater, and they stole the song, Jody had wrote the song. And they stole the guitar parts and the song and recorded it, and ripped Jody off for the money. Chess tried to sue. Anyway, he claimed that Bo Diddley double-crossed him or something. After that, he got disillusioned. He figured that he was tired of producing stuff and getting ripped off, and everybody was coming along like the Rolling Stones using Jody's licks and his thing, and they were making millions and he wasn't making anything, so he quit playing. He went into electronics. That's the story I heard, and I heard him say similar to that.

Why would you say the blues has managed to thrive in Chicago more than it has anywhere else?

Chicago blues--Chicago's one of the cities that, it's more blues in Chicago, it was in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, than there ever was in any other city. If you go to places like St Louis or Memphis, there was quite a bit of blues there. But the Chicago blues is based on the country blues that John Lee Williamson and Big Joe Williams and Robert Nighthawk and all those guys was producing in the late thirties and early forties. It came into the electric blues in the fifties. The reason why Chicago was different from all the other places, 'cause all the singers migrated to Chicago, because all the people came to Chicago. All the jobs--the people came here for the jobs. The steel mills, the restaurants, the domestic work, construction work, factories, and everything. When they came here, the people on weekends could go out and hear Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lonnie Johnson, in Chicago in the forties. You could hear Memphis Slim, all those people was playing Memphis Minnie, all these people was playing in Chicago. Roosevelt Sykes--they was playing all over this city, South Side and West Side. So there was countless clubs where you could go out and hear the blues. I don't think there's any other city where you could hear that many blues singers. Recording companies like Columbia and RCA Victor had their recording studios here. The singers would come here and record in Chicago. The ones who lived here played all the clubs around Chicago, and they could make a living, 'cause of the different spots all over the city. You could go out and hear blues any night of the week.

Chicago's always been--I have never been in any other city in the United States where as many blues clubs and many blues musicians congregated as in Chicago. People could just live here and depend on the clubs. In those days, they didn't do a lot of traveling on the road like Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley and all the people did in the fifties, on those package tours, going down south and touring. At that time, they didn't do a lot of touring. They just played the clubs, they made records and played all the local clubs. They went down south on occasion, but in the fifties it changed over, where B.B. King and all the guys was touring the road, playing different cities all over. But Chicago's been the place--there's more blues clubs in Chicago today, just as many or more clubs than you could anyplace else. Just 'cause the South is the South, that don't mean they like the country blues. It don't have a stronghold like Chicago. You go down to New Orleans now, you can't hardly find country blues played anywhere. You come to Chicago, you can find the guys playing all over the North Side playing blues.

Chicago has always been the greatest city for the blues that I can remember. When I was a kid, the clubs was teeming with blues singers. When I met Sonny Boy Williamson in 1948 I was only twelve, but he was playing at the Club Georgia, Big Bill Broonzy, he was playing at Gatewoods up on the West Side. Memphis Slim was playing, Memphis Minnie.

It's only a few clubs in Chicago, you got a place like the Checkerboard, its popularity rests on Buddy Guy and Junior Wells' popularity. Buddy's no longer affiliated with it now. But Buddy made the Checkerboard worldwide all over, like Junior and Buddy made Theresa. The whole world knows about Theresa's, and the Checkerboard through Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. They put that on the map. Now Buddy Guy is at Buddy Guy's Legends, he has the premier club in Chicago. They have other clubs, but none of them compare with Buddy Guy's. That's the best-playing club, and the club to work. They treat you right. Buddy has a great thing going down there. So Chicago is still the city, where you can come to Chicago and go out every night and hear six or seven different bands, or more. You go into a place like St Louis, you probably won't find no more blues in the city.

It was a way of life in Chicago, Memphis. Bobby Blue Bland, Howlin' Wolf was playing down in Memphis, it was the same thing as it is in Chicago. It was a way of life. The hard working people who supported the blues, which was all black, they wanted to hear the blues. It was a way of life for them--they lived the life, they go out and hear their music, their singers were singing, experience that the people in the audience had lived. The singers lived the same experience too. Wolf and B.B. and all, they lived the same. They worked on the plantations, they had the hardship, they lived under the oppression. They knew what the blues was. If you escaped to Chicago, you escaped here because you wanted to directly off from under your oppression. So they came to Chicago. And when you got here, the reason why Chicago was such a great place for people to come, where there was jobs galore, and everybody here was from somewhere--Memphis, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, everywhere. So when you on a job and a club, everybody was from the south. And they all had one thing in common--they was escaping oppression, the thing that gave them the blues in the first place. If it hadn't been for oppression, there never would have been any blues.

If you look in history, they brought blacks to the Caribbean and all the different islands, right. Only the blacks in America discovered the blues, created the blues. The blacks in America was oppressed more severely than the blacks in the Caribbean and other places, like Haiti. So the blues was created--those are the same slaves that came from Africa in Haiti and Jamaica, same ones--some of them came to Alabama and Mississippi and all of that. Same people, cousins and brothers and stuff. But in America, they were severely oppressed. And this severe oppression created the blues. That's why you hear the blues played in the world today, because it's a severe oppression. And it became a way of life. Not only it relieved tension and pressure, and when you came to Chicago, you was homesick, you didn't want to go back down there because of the oppression, so there was somebody singing, experiencing, you felt a sense of freedom. You was up north where you wasn't under direct oppression. If you lived on the South Side or West side, you didn't come into contact with plantation owners and guys with guns and lynch mobs and this kind of thing. You can listen to the blues and enjoy it, 'cause it was a way of life. People sung the blues when they were happy, sad, or whatever. Then they started singing about their troubles with the women and if you got laid off the job, you had the blues.

Anything else you want to add about the blues?

The blues, as a music that covers all spectrums of all people, 'cause everybody at one time has had the blues, whether you're black, white, or whatever. If you get a pink slip tomorrow and you were planning on getting married in a few months and had this great job, you got the blues, right? If your best girl call you up and say, well, I think I like this other guy better, you got the blues, man, she's floored you, you go and get you a drink and listen to the blues. If you don't even listen to the blues, you have the blues. That's why the blues is so worldwide in appeal, because any time people have had any kind of suffering or oppression in any shape form, whether it's slavery or war or whatever, they have had the blues. That's why I think the Europe embrace the blues so strongly, because they went through a lot of hardship during the wars over there. So they know what the blues is. They like the blues in Japan, they had the blues too. 

contents copyright Richie Unterberger, 2000-2010

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