In Tribute: Carey Bell Harrington
Carey Bell Harrington , Macon, Mississippi 1936-2007.
Photo: Date/source unknown.
Blues harmonica master Carey Bell died on May 6, 2007 of heart failure in his hometown of Chicago, IL. He was 70. Bell - the 1998 winner of the Blues Music Award for Traditional Male Artist Of The Year - was a veteran of both Muddy Waters' and Willie Dixon's bands as well as an award-winning solo artist, and a guest artist on countless blues recordings. Bell's classic, funky and deeply soulful blues place him firmly on the short list of blues harmonica superstars.
Bell was one of the very few harmonica players who didn't learn his craft by listening to old records, but by studying directly under his teachers Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs and Sonny Boy Williamson II. It didn't take long for Bell to develop his signature "chopped" harmonica phrasing and deep-blues style.
Carey Bell Harrington was born in Macon, Mississippi on November 14, 1936. A fan of Louis Jordan, Bell originally wanted a saxophone, but economic realities forced his grandfather to buy him a harmonica instead. He taught himself to play by the time he was eight, and began playing professionally with his godfather, pianist Lovie Lee, when he was 13. In 1956, Lee convinced Carey that Chicago was the place to be for aspiring bluesmen, and on September 12, 1956 they arrived. Almost immediately, Bell went to see Little Walter perform at the Club Zanzibar at 14th and Ashland. The two became friends and Walter delighted in showing the youngster some of his tricks. Carey went on to meet and learn from Sonny Boy Williamson II, but it was Big Walter Horton who really inspired him and became his mentor.
Carey learned his lessons well but by the late 1950s and early 1960s the gigs were drying up for harp players as the electric guitar began to take over as the predominant instrument of Chicago blues. Bell decided to increase his worth by becoming a bass player (learning the ropes from Hound Dog Taylor). He quickly mastered the instrument and began getting gigs as a bassist with Honeyboy Edwards, Johnny Young, Eddie Taylor, Earl Hooker and Big Walter. While playing bass in Big Walter's band, Bell studied every harp trick in the book first-hand from one of the all-time great harmonica players.
Bell, back on harp full-time, recorded behind Earl Hooker in 1968 for Arhoolie. By 1969 Bell was fronting his own band. His friend, harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite brought him over to Bob Koester at Delmark Records in 1969, who promptly signed Bell and recorded Carey Bell's Blues Harp. Bell spent 1971 traveling and recording with Muddy Waters (he can be heard on Muddy's The London Sessions and Unk in Funk albums on Chess). Willie Dixon chose Bell for the featured role in his Chicago Blues All-Stars, with whom Bell worked regularly throughout the 1970s, both touring and recording.
Even though Dixon kept Carey busy, Bell still found time for his own projects. In 1972 he teamed up with his friend Big Walter and recorded what was to be Alligator Records' second-ever release, Big Walter Horton with Carey Bell. In 1973 he made a solo album, Last Night, for ABC Bluesway and was featured in 1978 on Alligator's Grammy-nominated Living Chicago Blues series (both with his own band and playing behind Lovie Lee).
By the 1980s Bell had established himself worldwide as a giant among blues harmonica players. He recorded albums as a leader and as a sideman for a variety of labels both in the United States and Europe, and was constantly playing live. In 1990 Bell, along with fellow harpslingers Junior Wells, James Cotton and Billy Branch, got together and recorded the Blues Music Award-winning Alligator album, Harp Attack!In 1995, Bell's very first full-length solo album on Alligator, Deep Down, secured his reputation as a modern blues legend. His follow-ups, 1997's Good Luck Man (which received a Blues Music Award for Traditional Album of the Year), and 2004's Second Nature (an acoustic album recorded with his guitarist/vocalist son Lurrie Bell), pushed the blues farther out with Bell's rich vocabulary of deep grooves and contemporary sounds. Most recently, in 2007, Delmark Records released Gettin' Up Live, a CD/DVD featuring Bell once again performing with his son Lurrie.
Artist Profile: Muddy "Mississippi" Waters
Muddy Waters , Rolling Fork, Mississippi 1915-1983.
Photo: Muddy Waters, 1980. (David Michael Kennedy).
Born McKinley Morganfield on April 4, 1915, in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, to sharecroppers, Waters began playing harmonica as a teen and picked up guitar after hearing the likes of Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson and Son House. He quickly developed a bottleneck style of his own, recorded first by field folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress on a number of occasions between August 1941 and 1942.
Waters moved to Chicago's South Side in 1943 and played at neighborhood clubs with Blue Smitty and Jimmy Rogers. At the small clubs, his acoustic guitar could not be heard, so at the urging of both Little Walter Jacobs and Jimmy Rogers he decided to plug it into an amp and "put a little drive in it." In 1946, He recorded several tunes for Columbia Records, however none of these were issued at the time.
In 1947 he recorded his first sides for Leonard Chess' Chess Records (then known as Aristocrat) as a sideman for Sunnyland Slim. He recorded his own sides in '48, and Waters' second release, "I Feel Like Goin' Home"/"I Can't Be Satisfied", was a minor R&B hit and its understated accompaniment from bass player Big Crawford set a pattern for several further singles, including "Rollin' And Tumblin'", "Rollin' Stone" and "Walkin' Blues" all of which quickly became hot items and his popularity in clubs began to take off.
By 1951 Waters was using a full backing band and among the legendary musicians who passed through its ranks were Otis Spann (piano), Jimmy Rogers (guitar), Little Walter, Walter Horton and James Cotton (all harmonica). This pool of talent ensured that the Muddy Waters Band was Chicago's most influential unit and a score of seminal recordings, including "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I've Got My Mojo Working", "Mannish Boy", "Rollin’ Stone" and "I'm Ready', firmly established his reputation. A concert at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival exposed him to a much larger, now white audience and became one of his earliest LP releases.
As a staple on the '60s Chicago blues scene, he worked with a younger generation, such as Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, in perpetuating the electric Chicago blues sound. He worked with rock bands such as the Rolling Stones, (who named themselves after one of Water’s songs) and bands such as Canned Heat and Cream covered his songs. Deemed "old-fashioned' in the wake of soul music, he was obliged to update his sound and repertoire, resulting in such misjudged releases as Electric Mud, and After the Rain, both of which were critical and commercial disasters. Waters did complete a more sympathetic project in Fathers And Sons on which he was joined by Paul Butterfield and featured some excellent guitar from Mike Bloomfield, but his work during the 60s was overall generally disappointing. An auto accident in 1969 slowed him down a bit, but he still toured around the world and released several more Grammy winning LP’s on the Chess label during the early ‘70s, including Live at Mr. Kelly’s, Can’t Get No Grindin’, and The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album.
In 1976, an inspired series of collaborations with guitarist Johnny Winter signaled a dramatic rebirth. Waters's "comeback" LP, 1977's Hard Again was recorded in just two days and was as close to the original Chicago sound he had created as anyone could ever hope for. Former Waters sideman James Cotton contributed Harmonica on the Grammy-Award-winning album and a brief but well received tour followed. In 1978 Winter recruited Walter Horton and Jimmy Rogers to help out on Waters's I'm Ready duplicating the critical and commercial success of Hard Again. The comeback continued in 1979 with the lauded LP, Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live. The result is the next best thing to being ringside at one of his foot-thumping, head-nodding, downhome blues shows. King Bee the following year concluded Water's reign at Blue Sky, and all four LPs turned out to be his biggest-selling albums ever, successfully recapturing the fire and purpose of Waters' early releases and bestowing a sense of dignity to this musical giant's legacy.
Muddy Waters died in his sleep on April 30, 1983.
Artist Profile: Lefty Dizz
Lefty Dizz , Osceola, Arkansas 1937-1993.
Photo: Lefty Dizz (left) with Houston Stackhouse. Source/Date Unknown.
Lefty Dizz, born Walter Williams in the small town of Osceola, Arkansas, was always one of my favorite blues players based out of Chicago. Dizz, along with the likes of Hound Dog Taylor, Robert “Big Mojo†Elem, Willie Richards aka Hip Linkchain, Left Hand Frank, Leo “Lucky Lopez†Evans, Big Leon Brooks, Little Willie Anderson, Andrew Brown, and so many other great players, never became a household name, but he won the hearts of those fortunate enough to see one of his legendary performances in the small bars and clubs in and around Chicago, or on the festival stages of Europe.
Dizz, having moved to Chicago early on, was an entirely self-taught guitarist who started playing in his late teens, developing his own raw and distorted style based on the sound of the older Mississippi bluesmen. By the early ‘60s, Dizz had honed his craft well enough to gain a spot playing with Junior Wells’s Band, touring with the legendary harp player under his given name, well into the late ‘60s, while playing occasional guitar with J.B. Lenoir’s band.
The early 1970s found Dizz playing with Hound Dog Taylor’s Houserocker’s, and gigging anywhere and everywhere he could. From this lengthy experience, Dizz developed a solid stage presence that became legendary in Chicago, with wild stage antics, biting humor, and ferocious guitar playing. This enamored him with the local college crowd and blues fans, who came to see Dizz and his band, Shock Treatment raise hell throughout the ‘80s.
Recording opportunities didn’t come often for Dizz, and when they did, they lacked the passion and intensity of his live performances. His first full album, Shake For Me, was cut in France in ’79, with Big Moose Walker (p,v), Willie James Lyons (g), Mojo Elem (b), and Odie Payne (d). A second LP for the French Isabel label, Somebody Stole My Christmas, followed, but has been long since unavailable. Dizz recorded a third, and final studio session, Ain’t It Nice To Be Loved, on JSP in ’89, with Carey Bell (h), Jerry Soto (p), Lurrie Bell (g), Tyson Bell (b) and James Bell (d), but these sessions further shortchanged his talents.
Playing right up to the end, Lefty Dizz was diagnosed with cancer in the early ‘90’s. He passed away on September 7, 1993.
Dizz can also be heard on session work with Louisiana Red, Carey Bell, Kent Cooper, and with Hound Dog Taylor on his CJ Records singles, anthologized on Wolf Records.