In
1980, Living Blues magazine
founder Jim O'Neal approached left-handed guitarist Eddy Clearwater
about making an album for his new label, Rooster Blues.
That's when everyone started calling Eddy "The Chief," he said in a recent phone interview, "because I wanted to wear my headdress and ride a horse for the artwork, for the cover." The headdress has since become a signature piece in Clearwater's stage shows.
"I
got started singing when I was five years old," Marie Knight said
in a recent phone interview. "My mother used to stand me up on the
table in the church. That's been my life, the church."
As
a young woman, Denise LaSalle began writing songs. "I thought that
I could do that. I started writing songs and writing songs," she
said in a recent phone interview. "They used to laugh at me on my
job. 'Is she crazy? What's wrong
with her? What is she doing?'
... They wanted to know, 'Writing songs for who?' I would write a
song as I think that someone would sing it. I would say, 'I'm
writing this for Jerry Butler; this is for so-and-so. This one's
for Aretha.' In my mind this is who I thought could sing those
songs."
In
November, bluesman Michael "Hawkeye" Herman will spend a week at
a festival. At night, he'll perform in concert halls and clubs.
During the day, he'll play in schools, jails, halfway houses, and
other social-service institutions.
The
Holmes Brothers have always had an eclectic style. Wendell, the
guitar player and raspy-voiced singer, once told me that so many
hours touring in the van acquainted them with all kinds of music. I
can just hear them, all three singing along to whatever they happen
upon on the radio, trying it out later live and then in the studio
with their own gospel spin.
Alberta
Adams gained a foothold in the booming Detroit entertainment industry
as a tap dancer in the early 1940s at Club D&C. But "I always
wanted to be a singer," she said in a recent phone interview.
I've
read about Nappy Brown's energetic and ribald stage antics when he
was a big star in the 1950s. And having seen him lying on the floor
doing the "bug dance" at the 1993 Mississippi Valley Blues
Festival, I asked him what we should expect of his set with Muddy
Waters alumnus Bob Margolin at the fest this year.
Iowa
roots musician Greg Brown gazes out from the sepia dust-jacket of
Sandra Dyas's Down to the
River: Portraits of Iowa Musicians
as if he were part of a modern-day American
Gothic, setting the tone
for a book filled with earthy photographs. This picture is found
inside in black and white, opposite a posed shot of Kevin Gordon in
front of a door haloed with postcards.
