Here’s another musician who, like Dinu Lipatti (Tuesday’s post), died way too young: the great Chicago blues artist Magic Sam (AKA Samuel Maghett). He suffered a fatal heart attack just months after this performance. He was 32.
Today at 3 p.m., at a church on Chicago’s south side (First Church of Deliverance, 4301 S. Wabash), hundreds of gospel music lovers (including me) will gather to celebrate the birthday of this group’s lead singer—it’s her 84th.
Chicago, gospel’s Mecca and Vatican, remains the one city where traditional singers comprise a community, and retain a small but steady audience.—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (6th ed. 2002)
Both Chicago blues artists. Both guitar players. Both influenced by other kinds of music.
Musical personalities? They could hardly be more different.
Buddy Guy, “Let Me Love You Baby,” live
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Fenton Robinson, “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” live, 1977
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Back in the 1970s, when I was at Alligator Records, I had the pleasure of working with Fenton, co-producing his album I Hear Some Blues Downstairs (a Grammy nominee). He didn’t fit the stereotype of a bluesman. Gentle, soft-spoken, serious, introspective: he was all these things. He died in 1997.
This morning, like every Sunday morning, gospel will fill the air in churches all over Chicago’s south and west sides, including the Life Center Church of God in Christ at 5500 S. Indiana, where, at 11 a.m., this man will take the pulpit.
In the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), they take Psalm 149 to heart: “Sing to the Lord a new song . . . mak[e] melody to him with tambourine and lyre [and guitar and saxophone and anything else you can get your hands on].”
Here, to wrap up this festival, is one of the best performances by Otis Rush I’ve ever heard (which makes it one of the best blues performances I’ve ever heard [which makes it, etc.]).
Otis Rush (with Fred Below, drums), “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” live, Germany, 1966
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lagniappe
I was staying with my sister and messing around with the guitar every day for my own amusement. Then she took me around and introduced me to Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Little Walter, and the first time I saw that onstage, it inspired me to play. I thought that was the world.—Otis Rush
“Ships On The Ocean” (with Buddy Guy, guitar), live, Chicago (Theresa’s Lounge, 48th & Indiana), mid-1970s
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“Hoodoo Man Blues” (with Otis Rush, guitar; Fred Below, drums), live, Germany, 1966
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lagniappe
After Buddy [Guy] and Junior [Wells] did their show in Frankfurt [during a 1970 European tour opening for the Rolling Stones], Mick Jagger came into the dressing room and started to talk to Junior about a certain harmonica technique. First, Mick played for Junior, who listened carefully. Then, Junior pointed to his head and told Mick that the blues sound Mick was looking for was something he had to feel in his mind. It wasn’t just a matter of playing the instrument. He had to understand what the blues experience was all about and then bring it forth on his own.—Dick Waterman, Between Midnight And Day (2003).
Muddy Waters (with James Cotton, harmonica; Otis Spann, piano; Pat Hare, guitar; Andrew Stevenson, bass; Francis Clay, drums), “Got My Mojo Working,” live, Newport Jazz Festival, 1960
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lagniappe
Soon after he got to Chicago, Muddy [Waters] began playing the blues for his friends in relaxed moments, and that led to work playing at rent parties, for small tips and all the whiskey he could drink. ‘You know,’ he said, refilling his glass with champagne, ‘I wanted to go to Chicago in the late thirties, ’cause Robert Nighthawk came to see me and said he was goin’ and get a record. He says, you go along and you might get on with me. I thought, oh, man, this cat is just jivin’, he ain’t goin’ to Chicago. I thought goin’ to Chicago was like goin’ out of the world. Finally he split, and the next time I heard he had a record out. So I started asking some of my friends that had went to Chicago, Can I make it with my guitar? ‘Naww, they don’t listen to that kind of old blues you’re doin’ now, don’t nobody listen to that, not in Chicago. So when I finally come to Chicago, the same person that told me that . . . Dan’s wife, my sister, that’s the same person I started playin’ every Saturday night for, at the rent party in her apartment. Peoples is awful funny.’ He chuckled, savoring the irony. ‘So I started playing for these rent parties, and then I run into Blue Smitty and Jimmy Rogers and we got somethin’ goin’ on. We started playing little neighborhood bars on the West Side, five nights a week, five dollars a night. It wasn’t no big money, but we’s doin’ it.’ They were doing it, all right; they were creating modern blues and laying the groundwork for rock and roll.—Robert Palmer, Deep Blues (1981)
The well of Chicago gospel runs so deep it sometimes seems bottomless.
DeLois Barrett Campbell and The Barrett Sisters, “The Storm Is Passing Over,” live, 1982 (featured in the documentary Say Amen, Somebody)
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lagniappe
[DeLois Barrett Campbell and the Barrett Sisters’] harmony is special, probably the best in female gospel.—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (1975 ed.)
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DeLois Barrett Campbell & The Barrett Sisters
The O’Neal Twins
The Clark Sisters
The Louvin Brothers
The Delmore Brothers
The Stanley Brothers
The Everly Brothers
The Beach Boys
The Bee Gees
Kate & Anna McGarrigle
The Jackson Five
The Isley Brothers
The Neville Brothers
The list goes on, and on, and . . .
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mail
“Thanks very much for that—a really nice blog!”—Tristan Murail (12/26/09 [in response to an email letting him know that his music was being featured here])
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