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BLUES LEGACY: Tradition and Innovation in Chicago
Author: Dave Whiteis
Photos: Peter M. Hurley
University of Illinois Press
by Linda Cain
When esteemed educator, writer and music historian David Whiteis pens a
profile of an artist, he is not content to go with the mundane.
The Chicago author goes far beyond the standard Q & A interviews
or promotional bios; he delves deep in to his subject’s past and present
and gives us a glimpse of their future. He brings you into their world,
reveals what makes them tick and tells us how each of them discovered
the blues and why they made it their life’s work.
Whiteis gives the reader insight into the artist’s childhood, their
musical influences and how their environment shaped their development as
a musician. He also lends his critic’s voice to analyzing each artist’s
take on the blues genre. Colorful details and anecdotes from the
musicians’ careers are also included.
For instance, Muddy Waters and Magic Slim guitarist
John Primer, who started his
career playing with Junior Wells in the house band at Theresa’s Lounge,
recalls the time in 1974 when the feisty owner threw a beer can at
guitarist John Watkins’ head for playing the Wild Cherry song “Play That
Funky Music White Boy.” Theresa scolded, “Motherfucker, please don’t
play that shit in my place!”
Whiteis’ in-depth interviews also reveal very personal details. His
profile of Shemekia Copeland
includes much commentary from her mother who recalls the special
childhood relationship she shared with her late father, the Texas blues
icon Johnny Clyde Copeland, right up to the poignant final moments of
his life. Her birth name is Charon Shemekia, but it was her dad who only
called her Shemekia. He raised his daughter from birth to sing the
blues, which seemed strange in 1980s Harlem when rap and hip-hop were
all the rage. At age 9, Shemekia made her debut at the Cotton Club when
Johnny Clyde called her up to sing with him, which she did for the rest
of his life. When she was 15, her father suffered from congestive heart
failure and had to undergo multiple surgeries. Whenever Shemekia would
visit her dad in the hospital, she’d sing for him and his waning vital
signs would perk right up. Her voice was the perfect medicine to help
extend Johnny Clyde’s life. Shemekia went on to be signed by Alligator
Records in 1997, the same year her father died. On each of her albums
since then, Shemekia always covers one of her dad’s songs.
The only non-Chicagoan included in
Blues Legacy is
Big Bill Morganfield, who
hails from Florida and Georgia; the son of Muddy Waters who has never
lived in the same town as his famous father, but grew up in his large
shadow, nonetheless has a story to tell that is very compelling and
emotional. He was never able to enjoy a close relationship with Muddy as
child, but they finally connected once Big Bill had graduated with the
first of his two college degrees. “We talked really regularly until the
day he died,” Morganfield recalled. And when the legendary father left
his mortal coil on April 30, 1983, it had a profound impact on his son.
“It was just like somebody pulled my whole skeleton out of my body…it
felt like somebody de-boned me,” he related. From that day on, Big Bill
became obsessed with the blues, like never before.
Morganfield said he “went and locked myself in a room for six
years, a woodshed, and I learned it. Note by note. Measure by measure.
All of my dad’s records, I learned them.”
Blues Legacy
is organized into four parts: Bequeathers, Council of Elders, Inheritors
and Heirs Apparent.
Sadly, some of the subjects that the author chose to write about passed
away before the book was published, but he included them nonetheless:
Eddie Shaw, James Cotton, Eddy
“The Chief” Clearwater, Floyd Taylor, Otis Rush and Eddie Taylor, Jr.
In the Heirs Apparent section, which clocks in at 35 artist profiles,
Whiteis looks ahead by including two young artists in their 20s who are
bending and shaping the blues into the future:
Melody Angel (who appears on
the book’s cover) and Jamiah
Rogers.
Whiteis’ previous book Chicago
Blues: Portraits and Stories from 2006 profiled 11 artists with
lengthy chapters on each. He also wrote vivid stories about the Chicago
blues club scene past and present.
Fourteen years later, the Windy City blues scene has changed and Whiteis
includes many more African American musicians in his
Blues Legacy. Some of the
artists are featured in long, detailed chapters and others are briefly
profiled in short half-page bios. All told, there is an impressive array
of 48 artists included in Blues
Legacy along with stunning B&W photos by Peter Hurley.
Obviously Whiteis couldn’t include
every single artist on
Chicago’s blues scene in a 256-page book. Whittling the list down to a
manageable size was surely a monumental task for the author. After all
Chicago is hands-down the World Capitol of the Blues and there are
currently hundreds of working Chicagoland musicians (including sidemen
and women) of various ethnicities playing the blues (and playing them
very well). Some of them record and tour internationally to public and
critical acclaim. (To see a list of Chicago area blues artists on
Chicago Blues Guide’s band guide
CLICK HERE).
The author’s focus for Legacy
is to present the blues as a uniquely African American expression that
is forever entwined with the genre’s legacy that began in slavery and
moved up north during the Great Migration. The struggles faced by a
minority, both then and now, continue to be echoed in the blues art form
as it evolves in modern times. Whiteis illustrates how musicians on
today’s Chicago blues scene carry on the tradition handed down from the
elders, while updating the genre with current musical innovations.
Even if you’ve previously read articles or heard interviews with the
blues musicians profiled in Blues
Legacy before, you are guaranteed to learn something new and
interesting about them while reading this well-written and fastidiously
researched book by Mr. Whiteis.
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