Jimi Hendrix: Hero Worship

Many people idolize sports figures. Others idolize movie stars.
I am one of those who puts musicians on pedestals. Over the years my A-list has included James Brown, The Beatles, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Carlos Santana, Bob Marley, Frank Zappa, Michael Jackson, Prince, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stanley Clarke ,Buddy Guy and—believe it or not—at one time even Ludwig Van Beethoven.
But there’s one musician I’ve had a special relationship over the years: Jimi Hendrix. No matter who or what I am tuned into during a particular period, I slap in a CD every once in a while to catch up with Jimi.
What brings me to talk about him now is last week’s release of “Valleys of Neptune,” a CD containing new studio material from Hendrix. The 12 songs date mostly from 1969 during the final days of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the power trio the guitarist formed with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. It also features songs from the next stage of Hendrix’s development, his work with bassist Billy Cox, with whom he would later form Band of Gypsys.
Though most of the songs are familiar, the album breaks some new ground. A more funked up version of “Stone Free,” an uptempo rendition of the blues “Bleeding Heart,” an instrumental cover of “Sunshine of my Love,” and an extended version of “Red House” that literally milks the blues out of what has become his signature blues song make this album worth its ten dollar cover price. Not to mention the whimsical-sounding title track, a full-band version of which has never been heard before.
Hendrix was a pivotal musician in my life for a lot of reasons. Listening to “Red House” in college was my first exposure to the blues.He also solidified my affection for guitar oriented rock.
Still, my appreciation of him is posthumous. Though his work is rooted solidly in the music of African-American blues musicians, and though he began his career with R and B icons such as Little Richard and the Isley Brothers, Hendrix during his heyday was not part of the commercial black music scene. And, as an African-American youth growing up in Washington, D.C. during the 1960’s, I was more likely to be tuned into James Brown or Motown than him.
The only exposure I had to him while he was alive occured during a conversation I had with an older kid who was talking to me as “Foxy Lady” played over a pocket-sized transistor radio.
I was in eighth grade French class when I heard about Hendrix’s death on September 18, 1970. It just didn’t register.
But all through out that period I had a sneaking, sort of subliminal feeling that I should be paying more attention to him. In 1975, while a sophomore at Wesleyan University, I found out why.
Then, some student group rented “Jimi Plays Berkeley,” a film about a 1970 Hendrix concert in Berkeley; and the 1973 documentary “A film about Jimi Hendrix,” for a double feature at the college movie theatre. For about three hours, I was engrossed as Hendrix made sounds I’d never heard anyone make on the guitar before. The audience in the theatre was as transfixed as those in the films as Hendrix gyrated across the stage, playing his guitar behind his back and with his teeth. I loved his attitude! It was almost as if he was saying "I don't care whether or not you like it--but I know you do.

"

Afterwards, I heard a student say "it was just like he had been re-incarnated.”
Over the next three or four months I couldn’t buy enough Hendrix. I started with “Band of Gypsys,” “Greatest Hits,” “Electric Ladyland” and then bought “Hendrix in the West,” a posthumous album featuring live tracks gathered from several performances, including Berkeley and Isle of Wight.
“Hendrix in the West” featured an incredible version of “Red House” that I played at least twice a day for six months.
Then, as part of a senior year theatre class, I was assigned to write and perform a 15-minute monologue on a historical character. Guess who I chose? I borrowed a guitar, tie-died shirt and headband scarf and chose songs to play over my monologue. One of those songs was, what else? “Red House.”
Because I had to research the project, it was the first time I ever learned details of his life.
Since then, my hero-worship comes out at Border’s whenever I see a new book or magazine article on Hendrix. And that’s what drew me to “Valleys of Neptune,” which a newspaper article described as “a warning shot” for a wave of Hendrix material yet-to-come.
It's certainly a "warning shot" for me. And I'll probably be playing "Valleys of Neptune" on my way to the store for the next album.

Nadine Rae

With the power and beauty of her performances, Nadine Rae is sure to draw a crowd from any stage she steps on.
And the respect and affection that people have for the legendary blues and gospel singer have never been more evident than since Christmas Eve, when a bad accident left her unable to work.
Supporters organized benefit concerts for Rae around the D.C. area.
Anthony “Swamp Dog” Clark and his Blues All-Stars, the Dru Lore Band and Stacy Brooks, among others, took the stage for an event held January 16 at the Old Bowie Town Grille. A second concert featuring the Michael McHenry Tribe, Patty Reese, Dean Rosenthal, and Rae’s old group, the Rich Chorne Band, was held at The Whiskey in Annapolis on March 7.
And guitarist singer Memphis Gold said he will host one on April 11 at the American Legion in Silver Spring
Why such an outpouring of support?
"Nadine is a legend around here,” said Clark, one of the organizers of the Old Bowie Town Grille event. ”She’s done a lot of events for people so I just assumed....I knew people would turn out for her event."
Clark and other performers also cite the respect area musicians have for Rae as a singer.
"Great performers can project their emotions through the air and the audience receives them and they're not just playing in front of people, they’re playing for the people," said Dru Lore. "And she's one of those."
“She’s a great singer,” said Memphis Gold. “I think she’s got the potential to be a blues diva. She’s kind of a jazzy blues singer.”

The accident, in which Rae’s car flipped over multiple times after she hit a patch of ice while driving in Anne Arundel County, left her with serious eye injuries, said her friend, Rita Mansfield-Green. Eye surgery such as the type Rae underwent tends to effect the sinuses, said Mansfield-Green , coordinator of “Blue Monday,” a series of blues concerts held weekly at Washington’s Westminister Church. That in turn hampers breathing, impairing one's singing ability, she said.
“She’s struggling because she’s not getting any money for gigs,” said Mansfield-Green.
Born in Baltimore, Rae made her first recording when she was ten, singing with the Recording Choir of the First Mt. Olive Freewill Baptist Church. She later sang with several gospel groups in the D.C-. Baltimore area.
Gospel artists she has worked with include Olivia Branch Walker, the Hawkins family, the late Hardie Clifton of the Brooklyn All-Stars, the late Willie Neal Johnson & the Gospel Keynotes, and the late Gloria Spencer, among others.
As a blues singer, she has worked with many of the best, including Ronnie Baker Brooks, Bobby Parker, Ron Holloway, Charles "Big Daddy" Stallings, Tom Principato, Tommy Castro and Deanna Bogart. She has opened for Shemekia Copeland, Kenny Wayne Shepherd & Double Trouble, B.B. King, Jennifer Holliday, the late Oliva Branch Walker and the Rev. Timothy Wright.
Ida Campbell, a blues singer who also hosts a blues show on WPFW-FM radio, said any full time artist could find themselves in Nadine's current situation.
Full time artists don't have any other means of income," she said. "Their performance and entertainmentship is what they do and that's how they get paid. They're not able to work, they don't get paid they don't have money to meet their necessities and their bills.”

Memphis Gold's Pickin' In High Cotton

Much of the music calling itself blues nowadays doesn’t deserve the title, says D.C. area singer/guitarist Memphis Gold.
He promises that his new CD will school folks on what the blues really are.
Entitled “Pickin’ In High Cotton,” the CD is Memphis Gold’s fourth. It presents traditional stories of what gives people the blues, using traditional musical forms to tell those stories. And it carries a lesson to heavy metal guitar heroes who think they are playing the blues without knowing what the term really means.
“Anybody whose young, they never had no blues,“ says Memphis, who at the age of five began chopping wood, picking cotton, and carting coal around the city that would later provide him with the name he now performs under.
“So I’m sort of telling some stories within it about how I had to work hard in cotton fields. And if you’re going to really be blue, then you’ve got to know something about being blue. It ain’t no joke.
Tales of hard work and hard times—much from Memphis’ own past— provide the subject matter for “Pickin’ In High Cotton,” which is scheduled for a June release. In “Homeless Blues,” he talks about the 18 months he spent homeless on the streets of Washington.
But he will pay his respects to a personal hero with a song about abolitionist John Brown, hanged in 1859 for trying to start a slave revolt by taking over a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
“What I’m doing is writing a song basically about that day that John Brown went to take over the armory,” he says. “I’m kind of sympathizing with John Brown, I want to glorify the job that he did for blacks in Harper’s Ferry.”
Memphis says he decided to do the John Brown song after performing at a festival in Harpers Ferry dedicating property once owned by the abolitionist. A friend of Memphis’ now owns the tract.
Nine of the album’s twelve songs have been written, he says, adding that there is some acoustic work. “I want to let them know I can play acoustic,” he says.
Several harmonica players join Memphis for the album, including Charlie Sayles, Jay Summerhour, Phil Williams, and Robert Lighthouse. “Each of these guys has different sounds,” he says. “I kind of write songs that would fit their personalities.”
Memphis, who has turned to other bass players in previous albums, will hold the bottom down himself in “Pickin’ In High Cotton.”
“A lot of times I feel more comfortable playing the bass behind myself because the guys want to overplay,” he says.
Born Chester Chandler in Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis was introduced to the guitar at the age of four by his father, a musician who played the bass fiddle and piano in church. By the time he was eight years old, young Chester was playing for pocket change on Beale Street.
While growing up, Chester was able to learn from well-seasoned and well-renowned musicians.
“A lot of the people I played with, they were born in the 1800’s,” he recalls. In fact, I had an uncle who was born in 1895, so I was singing along with people like that, the old folks.”
Among those he crossed paths with was the legendary Delta picker and gospel player the Reverend Robert “Tim” Wilkins.
“He and my father used to sit down and play together, my father was a musician, and on Sunday my training was through them, watching those two guys,” Memphis recalls.
Among other things, they taught him how to follow a song’s changes on his guitar. “If someone started a song off I could slide down the E-string and find the key,” he explains. “I wouldn’t exactly know what key I was in but I would know the sound. I heard the sound of their voice and I knew that was where I was supposed to be playing at, I knew where to distinguish where they were on the fret board.”
The title of one of Memphis’ albums, The Prodigal Son, was inspired by the title of a cover that The Rolling Stones did of a Wilkins song.
But he did not mean it as a tribute to the Rolling Stones’ version.
“They made millions of dollars off of that song, and they have yet to give his granddaughter props,” he says. “Or royalties. I’m just making a statement to them that I’m the real prodigal son, I played with him as a boy and he’s the one who taught me.”
Memphis joined the Navy in 1973, during the Vietnam era, and remained on active duty until 1981. He spent the first part of his stint on a boat outside of Vietnam. He is proud of his service: he remained in the reserves until 1985 and has since done USO tours around the world. Still, he recalls his experience as one that sometimes gave him the blues because of the way blacks were treated.
“You could feel the tension. You figure, I was on a ship of 300 and there were only forty of us (blacks),” he recalls. “And it was that way throughout the Navy.”
Moreover, blacks were generally only allowed the most unpleasant jobs. They could either be a steward who shined shoes for the officers, a boatswain mate who chipped paint all day or, like Memphis, a boilerman “in the bowels of the ship with all of the engines and the boilers, smokin’ hot.”
He arrived in Washington during the early 90’s¸where he was homeless for about 18 months. But his fortunes changed after he used money earned through landscaping and yard work to buy a guitar from a pawn shop.
After playing regularly at a D.C. area club, he became a full-time musician to tour with singer/guitarist Deborah Coleman. He formed his own band in the mid-1990’s, producing his first CD in 1998.
In February, 1996, he rescued 11 children after a train wreck in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was honored for his efforts.
In 2008, he fell 35 feet from a tree, breaking his back in three places. Doctors told him it was doubtful that he would ever walk again. Still, he continued to play shows and from his hospital bed wrote songs for his third album, 2009’s Gator Gon ‘Bitechu.

Kim Wilson on the harp, on singing, on Muddy, on all kinds of stuff

Harmonica player Kim Wilson has come into contact with many blues greats over the years--and he thanks everyone of them. Leader and Co-founder of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Wilson credits Eddie Taylor with helping him find his harmonica chops, Muddy Waters for mentoring him and a plethora of musicians ranging from Slim Harpo to Lazy Lester and James Cotton for inspiring him.
Wilson, whose Thunderbirds are known for such blues/rock hits as "Wrap It Up" and "Tuff Enuff," spoke to Beldon's Blues Point last month moments after his latest project, White Loafer, debuted before a packed house at the Old Bowie Town Grille. Joined for the night by Roomful of Blues drummer Ephraim Lowell, the band played a set that gave Wilson a chance to delve into his bluesy side, both as a singer and as a harmonica player.
During the interview, Wilson contrasted his roles as singer and harmonica player. He also spoke of the importance of honesty in the blues world and his appreciation of other forms of music. Our questions and his responses follow:

BBP: I understand Muddy Waters was a big influence in your life.
Kim Wilson: Yeah, he was. He was like a father to me, and, uh, he did a lot of great things for me when I was a kid that I probably didn't even deserve but he did it for me anyway. He just liked what I did for some reason. Course I played with all of the guys, but Muddy was a very special guy for me of course and Jimmy Rogers as well. I've played with people like Eddie Taylor, Eddie Taylor was like the first guy I ever played with. And uh, people who really didn't need harmonica players, like Pee Wee Crayton and Lowell Fulson and Albert Collins you know, and John Lee Hooker back when I was a kid a lot a lot of people, Luther Tucker..the list goes on and on.


BBP: So you're doing about 300 shows a year now, is that accurate?

Wilson: 300 shows? No, not that many. No, I've trimmed way back, maybe 100, 150. But it's kind of misleading because I do a lot of stuff with the solo band too. And so, I'm not exactly sure how many I do. But, uh, it's plenty.

BBP: Where are the Thunderbirds going these days? Where are they heading?

Wilson: We got a new CD...and we're still adjusting that and, new agent, senior manager a lot of work coming in, Thank God and, uh, I'm blessed to be around the people that I'm around at both ends. It's really a fantasic thing for me. Over the years I've sort of culled out all of the ones I didn't want to be around, and I've got all of the people I do want to be around now, which is awesome. So I'm ready to go. Feel great. Ready to go.

BBP: Of all of the people you ever played with, of all of the gigs you've ever played is there one that kind of stands out in your mind?

Wilson: A couple of the ones with Muddy, you know. But I mean there have been a lot of them. A lot of them. You know early on, when I was a kid a couple of the ones with Muddy Waters, you know.

BBP: Can you think of one in particular?

Wilson: I had just met him, you know, and he was playing a Little Walter song and he made me stand up because he thought I reminded him of Little Walter. I had just met him, it was a big thing for me. There was another one way way back, when I..somebody got me on stage at a George Smith show and I was checking it out and my buddy who died a couple of years ago made me get up there and it was one of those shows where George, my friend played two or three numbers and he'd get down and George would get up so he wanted me to play in his place and I was trying not to do it but he made me. So I got about a song-and-a-half into it and George popped up on stage with me. And that was the beginning of a very wonderful friendship. (George)was a very underrated guy, they were all generous, all of these guys were generous people. I don't know what they saw in me, but they saw something and that kept me going, playing this kind of music. Because there's really not any incentive to do right, you know. It's not something that people think of as a career anymore. But myself, I've found a niche for myself and uh, I do a lot of different things. It's really the singing that keeps me alive, not the harmonica playing.

BBP: You said the singing and not the harmonica playing keeps you going?

Wilson: Well, you know the harmonica is....one thing about the harmonica and every other instrument is, they are only there to enhance the voice. The voice is the whole thing. The harmonica is, just something to set the voice up.

BBP: Whose influenced you most as a player?

Wilson: They all have their thing that they do which is fantastic. Junior Wells was a real understated guy but a great harmonica player. Really great singer I learned a lot of singing from him. And uh, James Cotton of course is still a dear friend of mine. He was really the first guy I got turned on to before Little Walter. All of them, Lazy Lester, Junior Parker, Slim Harpo. (The way to) develop your own thing is to have so many influences...you're not able to emulate them all at once, you know what I mean? It just comes out like you, eventually. It's all those different sounds, all those different things. A lot of people forgot that singing is the basis for everything that is blues. At one time there were no instruments, just singing.

BBP: Whose influenced you most as a singer?

Wilson: Well, everybody. I love Bobby Bland he just had a birthday yesterday. Just turned 80, I was trying to get a hold of him and I couldn't find him so, I hope he hears this. You know I mean everybody, Jimmy Rogers, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Reed, BB King back in the RPM days. BB King was incredible because, he was really the best at both things at once. Also, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, all of these people. James Cotton was a fantastic singer. He lost his voice unfortunately.

BBP: What do you want to do with your band?

Wilson: It's wide open what I can do with this thing. I'm going to do a lot of different configurations and then I'm going to do the blues cruise next October, I'm going to add a couple of horns to the blues band....I'm very excited, it's a nice thing to have kind of a rebirth at this stage in my life. It takes a long time to get where you want to go musically. And I'm not saying I'm there yet, I've sort of busted into the basement of the peer group I want to be in. Most of them are dead unfortunately which I highly regret because they'e not able to see what's happening out here. I get so upset, I see a lot of people..It's like they're waiting for these guys to die so they can come out and do this--this--stuff that they're trying to call blues today. If it's musical that's okay, B.B. was right, there's good music and there's bad music. But when you make the mistake of putting a label on it, it really puts a bad taste in people's mouths, so if you label things blues--even if they're good--and it's not blues, it's just wrong. People in the audiences have gotten very mixed up about what this stuff is. You can only modernize this music so much before it becomes something else, before it becomes something that it's not.
If you look at a guy like little Milton or Albert King or Albert Collins, they really modernize it in a way that's legitimate. I think to skip your homework, and come out...because, when you look at the old masters and go "I'm never going to be able to do that," people skip that, and pull the wool over people's eyes, it's criminal to me, and I have zero tolerance for it. So do what you do and stand up and be counted for it and call it what it actually is and if it's good, great. There's a lot of different music that I like.

BBP: What other kinds of music do you like?

Wilson: I like soul, I like jazz, I like old-time country and western musio, I like reggae, I like a lot of things. There's a lot of different kinds...I like some modern music, yeah. I was watching Mary J. Blige on the TV the other night doing the Haitian benefit, man. Boy, she was--that's old school to me, I don't know. She's just awesome. She had a great band, the Roots, you know those guys? That's a serious band. Boy that band is unbelievable.

BBP: You still keep in touch with Jimmy Vaughn?

Wilson: No. Not too much. Once in a while. I guess he's doing okay.

Anthony "Swamp Dog" Clark

Growing up in York, Pennsylvania, Anthony Clark had a love of music so strong his parents bought him a snare drum and signed him up for lessons when he was just a toddler.
Later, a teen-aged Clark would add harmonica to his repertoire.
Now, three years out from his retirement as an information technology manager,Clark, 58, is pursuing his musical interest with more fervor than ever, blowing his harp throughout the D.C. area, his adopted home for over 30 years.
Under the name "Swamp Dog," Clark has performed at such venues as Bangkok Blues, Chick Hall's Surf Club, the Eastport Democratic Club, the Congressional Blues Festival and the Greenbelt Blues Festival.
Clark says he wants to entertain audiences in "Spain, England, Italy, Holland, back here and then back over there again." Still he is not looking for fame and fortune. "Don't have to be a star. Just want to work," he says.
Clark's first experiences as a performer came through marching bands. In high school, he drummed at parades and football half-time shows.
He eventually learned how to play a full drum set, joining a top-40 band when he was about 15 years old. At this time, Clark's interest in harmonica was starting to intensify, and he began studying books on the instrument and listening to recordings of famous players. Sonny Boy Williamson was his first inspiration. "The first book I ever bought talked about him the most, the first albums I ever bought" were his, Clark says. "I picked up most of my chops from him at the time."
James Cotton, Little Walter and Paul Butterfield also left their marks. "When they play it they mean it. You can hear it," he says
Learning how to bend notes was the hard part, he says. "That, and getting tone, that certain vibrato," he says. But as he mastered it, he began to incorporate the harmonica more into his top-40 gigs.
His musical career digressed a bit in 1976 after he moved to the D.C. area and began working gigs as a jazz drummer. "This was on the job training for sure because my background didn't have any of this type of music in it," he says.
He played drums behind Wilson Pickett in the early 1980's at an outside show arranged by popular D.J. Moonman Bacote.
"As a drummer I always played on top of the beat...that day he told me to play a little behind the beat," Clark recalls. "That's about as much interaction as I had with him that day. I knew his songs. He just counted them off, we went into them and that was it."
But eventually the blues prevailed as Clark's music of choice and the harp as his instrument of choice. "The ease of just whipping out my harp at lunch and blowing kept me motivated to continue playing music. Finally I heard of the Surf Club and the fact that at that time they had open mic blues jams. I started going there to hone my chops."
He was tapped by guitarist John Vengrouski and drummer Art McKenny to join them in forming the Capital Blues Ensemble band, which performed at the Silver Spring Blues Festival in May, 2009.
He formed the All-Stars in July. In addition to Clark, the band features Ken Sparks on guitar, Charles "Red" Atkins on bass and Mike Simon on drums.
"We do (Herbie Hancock's) 'Chameleon', we do 'All Blues'--which is obviously blues--by Miles Davis... we do (The Meters') 'Cissy Strut'...so we do a few songs that are not blues but they hit which is one of my strong prerequisites to doing a tune. By hit I mean funk, funky like. Because a lot of the songs we do are obviously blues but there' a funk edge to the blues."
Sparks says Clark's background on the drums augments his already formidable skills as a bandleader. "He basically has a feel for how everybody's part should go in the songs, and he lets us play our instruments the way we want," Sparks says. "But he also has a particular sound he wants us to produce and conveys that to us well."
Clark was the first person Old Bowie Town Grille owner Robert Thompson thought of when he decided to supplement his club's regular Wednesday night jam with a second one on Thursday. "He gets along well with all of the musicians," Thompson says. "He's very professional but I thought that he would be able to develop a different crowd then my Wednesday night," which is hosted by drummer Chip Clemmer.
The Thursday night offering has had its "ups and downs" but is "developing into a pretty good jam," he adds.
Attending all of Clark's gigs is Marcella, his wife of 29 years. An "absolute" blues lover, she is probably his toughest critic, scolding him whenever, for example, he allows too much down time between songs while performing.
Still, she thinks his playing has "gotten a hundred percent better" since his retirement. "When he plays he feels it," she says. "and to me that makes all of the difference in world."

James Cotton

The following might interest Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. And we know he can get a date!
Harmonica player James "Superharp" Cotton will perform at a jazz festival in Buenos Aires on November 24.
Cotton, 74, grew up the youngest of eight siblings in Tunica,Mississippi. He recalled hearing his mother make chicken and egg sounds on her harmonica, and tried to imitate those sounds when he received a 15-cent harmonica as a Christmas present.
He realized that the instrument could do more after listening to Sonny Boy Williamson play it on the King Biscuit Time radio program.
Both of Cotton's parents had died by his ninth birthday. His uncle then took him to Sonny Boy Williamson, and the two harmonica players began to tour the Mississippi-Arkansas juke joint circuit. James--too young to play inside--often provided "an opening act" for Williamson on the steps of the clubs. Cotton was so good that he sometimes made more money playing outside of the clubs than Sonny Boy Williamson made inside.
Williamson left to rejoin his estranged wife, and the teen-aged Cotton went to Beale Street in Memphis, where he supported himself with his harmonica and by shining shoes. Also during his teen-age years, he played juke joints in Missouri and Mississippi with Howlin' Wolf, whom he had met at an Arkansas club.
At 17, Cotton had a 15-minute radio on KWEM of West Memphis, Arkansas, located across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee.
He also started playing with Muddy Waters, who showed up at one of Cotton's gigs and introduced himself. Cotton would remain with Muddy for 12 years.
Cotton first became a bandleader himself in 1967. He played the Fillmore East in New York, the Fillmore West in Los Angeles, and venues in-between,opening for or sitting in with Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Santana and B.B. King, among others.
In the 1980's Cotton received a series of Grammy nominations. His first, for "Live From Chicago: Mr. Superharp Himself," came in 1986. He received the second the following year for "Take Me Back." A third nomination came in 1988 for "James Cotton Live."
In 1994 he had throat surgery and radiation treatments, but was on the road with his James Cotton Trio soon afterwards.
This year--his 65th in the business--Cotton tours with a band consisting of Slam Allen on guitar and vocals; Tom Holland on guitar and vocals; Noel Neal on bass; and Kenny Neal Jr. on drums.

Reflections on Sam Carr

On September 19, I traveled to Media, Pennsylvania to attend a fund-raising party held by guitarist Lonnie Shields for Sam Carr, the famous Delta drummer.
Having written a magazine article about Shields, I knew how he felt about Carr. When Shields was a teen-ager in West Helena, Arkansas, Carr had introduced him to the blues and had schooled him in it by taking him to Delta juke joints.
This was the third party Shields had thrown to raise mony for the ailing 83-year-old drummer, and I could see his enthusiasm as he carted out steaming trays of chicken and ribs to serve the approximately 90 guests gathered in his backyard. He seemed even more enthusiastic when he stepped onto his back porch to join musicians who were entertaining those guests with blues music.
We should have known the festive atmosphere was too good to last. Two days later, Carr died of congestive heart failure. "God works his own magic," Shields concluded later. "You have no idea when he's going to call you in."
I had never met Sam Carr. I interviewed him briefly over the phone for the article on Shields. I also wrote an obituary on Carr for the same magazine. Through these experiences, I developed some idea as to who the man was. And he was different things to different people.
Carr was an influential musician who happened to be the son of another influential musician, guitarist Robert Nighthawk, who played with Joe Williams and Sonny Boy Williamson. Carr was also a bandleader and businessman, having organized and headed The Jelly Roll Kings with Big Jack Johnson and Frank Frost. He was also a mentor and teacher to musicians like Shields and guitarist singer Dave Riley, with whom he toured in his later years.
But to Maie Smith, Group Tour Manager of the Delta Blues Museum in Clarkesdale, Mississippi, Carr was “the fish man” who would come to her town of Rich, Mississippi to sell his catch of the day. Smith did not know he even played music--let alone was a major player of the blues--until she enrolled at Ol' Miss as a young woman and ran across his name in a book while working in the Blues Archives there.
“I was shocked,” she recalled. “It was amazing that I grew up around there and didn’t have no idea that he was so well known.”
Ora Young knew Carr as the uncle who livened up her summers.
“I was proud of him, we enjoyed it," recalled Young, who frequently made summer trips to Mississippi to visit her relatives while growing up in Chicago. "Through him we got a chance to meet a lot of people we wouldn’t have met, like Pinetop Perkins, Little Milton, Albert King, Bobby Rush, and Otis Clay."
Shields was fascinated with groups such as Earth, Wind and Fire and the Isley Brothers when he knew Carr as a teen-ager. Carr was the one who told him he needed to move past those groups to play the blues--then brought him to local juke joints so he could learn how.
"He was a teacher if you listen to him but most of the time I wouldn't listen," Shields recalled. "I would try to do it my way and not his way. That's when he'd say I didn't listen. But nowadays I wish I had listened to him."
During my interview with him, Carr recalled how he used to mentor younger musicians. “I don’t try to discourage them from playing what they want to play because that’s what they’re going to play anyhow," he said. "At least that’s what they’re going to try to play.”





































































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