ROOSEVELT SYKES

The Original Honeydripper

Blind Pig Records

By Leslie Keros

With a career that spanned six decades, Roosevelt Sykes inspired generations of players with the irrepressible joy of his music. In The Original Honeydripper, he demonstrates the range and breadth that made him a giant among blues pianists.

The reissue of an out-of-print Sykes recording is alone cause for celebration, but The Original Honeydripper also happens to be an exceptionally fine album. Recorded in 1977 at a nightclub named the Blind Pig, it vividly recalls the thriving music scene of the day in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which had become world-famous for the blues, jazz, and folk festivals it had hosted since the Sixties. The Blind Pig—then a European-style coffeehouse with a subterranean bar and performance space—became the namesake of a record company launched by one of the club’s owners, and The Original Honeydripper was among the label’s first releases.

Roosevelt Sykes was one of a long line of distinguished blues artists who performed regularly at the Pig. During a two-night stint in April, the crowd showed their appreciation, alternately quiet as church mice and raucous as only blues audiences can be. The star relished the attention and encouragement, and he repaid it handsomely with a set that beautifully captured his prowess as an entertainer and a musician.

When The Original Honeydripper was recorded, Sykes was 71 and had been writing music and performing for more than fifty years. In this recording he drew deeply from the well of barrelhouse, boogie woogie, and stride styles he had mastered over his prolific career. After warming up with the classic “Cow Cow Blues,” Sykes turns in a rollicking performance of one of his best-known songs, “Drivin’ Wheel.” It’s rarely performed on solo piano, and what a treat it is to hear the composer’s rendition, punctuated with repeated exclamations of “Whoa” from Sykes and answering cries from the audience.

Next up is “Honeysuckle Rose,” a song whose composer, Fats Waller, played both fast and slow. Many pianists favor the slower tempo, but Sykes’s buoyant, upbeat performance of it here sounds fresh and true. Sykes’s arpeggiated introduction to “St. James Infirmary”—unusual for this chestnut—sounds like a nod to pianist Professor Longhair, whose style Sykes must have absorbed when he took up residence in New Orleans a decade or so earlier.

Less-familiar originals also populate the set, ranging from the silly (“I’m a Nut,” “Don’t Talk Me to Death”) to the sad (“Too Smart Too Soon,” “Early Morning Blues”) and, of course, the saucy (“I Like What You Did”). Throughout the recording, Sykes comes across as a consummate pianist who is having far too much fun to take himself seriously.

When introducing the final song of the set, the bawdy anthem “A Dirty Mother for You,” Sykes teases the audience by delivering his remarks in a tone of mock innocence. “I recorded this song in 1934,” he begins. “Some people say it’s suggestive. Some say it’s smutty. And some people say it’s corruptible. Some people say it’s just plain dirty,” he says, pouring it on as the audience hoots and hollers their approval. “But it’s nothing of the sort—although I have no control over your thoughts.” He then proceeds to play the song with obvious amusement, luxuriating in the abundant double-entendres and exaggerating the consonants as he goes, cracking up more than once at the outrageousness of some of the lyrics.

Nobody can maintain a straight face for long. And that’s just how the honeydripper likes it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Leslie Keros hosts two Chicagoland radio shows: Blues Edition (with Greg Freerksen) on WDCB 90.9 FM, airing Saturdays from 7 to 9 p.m., and Crossroads: Where Jazz Meets Blues on WHPK 88.5 FM, airing alternating Wednesdays from 7 to 9 p.m.