Bass player Willie Dixon did more than any other songwriter to popularise the blues and its folk roots.
The liner notes to legendary bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon’s 1970 album I Am the Blues state that he “may well be the single most influential artist in the modern blues.” This is no exaggeration: the Dixon originals on the album include “Back Door Man,” “The Seventh Son,” “Spoonful,” and “I Ain’t Superstitious.” His songs, familiar to blues, rock, and jazz fans alike, personified and popularised the blues more than those of any other figure in American music.
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 1, 1915, Dixon, a one-time heavyweight boxer, began his recording career in 1940 as part of the Five Breezes in Chicago, with his partner Leonard “Baby Doo” Caston. Six years later, with Caston and the Big Three Trio, the physically massive bassist scored a popular hit with a version of Joe Turner and Pete Johnson’s “Wee Wee Baby, You Sure Look Good To Me.” Then a series of dates at Chicago’s El Mocambo club helped to ensure Dixon’s place in history. The club was run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, who later launched the deeply influential Chicago Blues label, Chess Records. In 1948, Dixon worked as session bassist for the fledgling label, and when his Big Three Trio broke up, Dixon’s songwriting career took off at Chess. It was boosted further in 1954, when Muddy WATERS recorded Dixon’s “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” and “I’m Ready.” Indeed, many famous artists from Chess’s burgeoning roster covered Dixon’s material: harmonica-player LITTLE WALTER (“My Babe”); Willie Mabon (“Seventh Son”); and notably, Howlin’ Wolf, a blues giant whose repertoire was full of Dixon classics such as “I Ain’t Superstitious,” “Little Red Rooster,” and “Back Door Man.” They were the first of many.
Bass player Willie Dixon did more than any other songwriter to popularise the blues and its folk roots.
Between 1957 and 1969, the bassist left Chess for the Cobra label, where he worked with a number of highly reputed players, including Magic Sam, Buddy GUY, and Otis Rush—who scored a hit with Dixon’s “I Can’t Quit You, Baby.” By this time, Dixon’s songs were the mainstay of many a blues artist’s repertoire. However, it was Dixon’s genius for combining older folk-blues with new electric pop-blues forms that brought him to the attention of groups like the ROLLING STONES, and eventually a wider audience. Their 1964 recording of “Little Red Rooster” went to No. 1 on the charts in Britain, and began a trend among British rock’n’roll bands. LED ZEPPELIN adapted several Dixon tunes for their first two albums. Ironically, they—and many other British bands—borrowed from American blues greats like Dixon, often without acknowledgement, and found much greater commercial success than the original artists ever did.
Dixon recorded for such labels as Columbia, Pausa, and Ovation throughout the 1970s and 1980s, finally receiving long overdue acclaim. Dixon had titled both an album and an autobiography I Am the Blues by the time he died in 1992 and nobody contradicted him.
Dave DiMartino
SEE ALSO:
BLUES; BRITISH BEAT MUSIC; CREAM; JOHNSON, ROBERT.
Dixon, W., with D. Snowden. I Am the Blues: The
Willie Dixon Story (New York: Da Capo Press, 1989).
Hidden Charms; I Am the Blues;
Willie’s Blues; Willie Dixon.