VA - Chicago's Best West & South Side Blues Singers Vol. 1 [Chicago Blues Session Vol. 16]

Every blues town has hotbeds of activity. Places where the real excitement is going on. Places where you can feel the real pulse of the blues thumping. Places where men with nicknames they have earned, not stolen, play night after night in obscurity. Occasionally these men might get heard by someone and make a recording or two, but most wind up in the same clubs on the same streets doing it over and over again. But the point is they keep on doing it. Chicago's south side and west side are the epitome of these hotbeds. Throughout the years hundreds and hundreds of blues players have filled the clubs with their music. Many we'll never hear of. This CD captures five of these artists.

Booba Barnes,though most often associated with Mississippi, spent the last five years of his life in Chicago striving to be the star he always wanted to be. Booba, was gotten from „Booby", a childhood nickname given to him by his bother because he was like a booby trap, always about to go off and get in trouble. He was born in Longwood, Mississippi, near Greenville, in 1936. As a child he picked up the harmonica and tried to blow and at the age of 13 Booba got the chance to play with his idol, Howlin' Wolf. Booba learned Wolf's act, from his harp playing to his vocal inflections and to his stage antics and utilized these throughout his career. By 1953 Booba was working in his brother-in-law, little Jerry Jones' band, the Jones Brothers. After the band split, Barnes learned to play guitar and began fronting his own trio in 1958. In the early 1960s Booba teamed with local guitarist Smokey Wilson and formed the house band at Rolling Fork's Gold Coast Inn, the Swingin' Gold Coasters. Booba did his first stint in the Windy City from the mid-1960s till 1971 teaming again with the Jones Brothers band. After returning to Greenville, Barnes began to take hold as the central figure in the local blues scene. He played up and down Nelson Street with other local blues favorites like T-Model Ford, Frank Frost and Otis Taylor and worked as the bartender at Perry Payton's Flowing Fountain. Finally in 1982 Barnes decided that if he could do it all for Payton he could do it also for himself and thus the legendary Playboy Club was founded. 928 Nelson Street soon became home of the hottest juke joint performer of the 1980s. Booba Barnes reigned supreme in his court. He ran the bar, bounced the drunks, played the music and slept in the back room. In 1990, soon after" the release of his only album, The Heartbroken Man, on Rooster Blues, Booba again headed North.
These sides were recorded in 1995 with veteran Chicago sidemen Eddie Shaw, Detroit Junior, Lawrence Bunville, Terry Taylor and Vaan Shaw. Barnes revisits his signature tune „Heartbroken Man" and two of his most popular Wolf covers „How Many More Years" and „Louise" (on which Barnes displays his harp prowess.) Barnes was a true blues showman. He could play with a tune and drag it on endlessly if he saw the crowd wanted more, and then he could conjure up the
past with the best damn Howlin1 Wolf imitation in the business. Booba Barnes died in 1 996 in Chicago.

Barkin' Bill Smith is a long time west side resident. Born in Cleveland, Mississippi in 1928, Smith sang in the Glory Bound Quartet as a teenager and moved to St. Louis in the 1940s to get away from the racial pressures in Mississippi. After a stint in Detroit, Smith settled in Chicago in 1958 and teamed up with Lonnie Brooks. He made his first recordings in 1991 with Dave Spector for Delmark Records and followed in 1995 with his first solo release. Smith has always been a vocalist fashioned in the Joe Williams style and his rich baritone voice has served him well. He has fronted bands around Chicago for the last fourty years and continues to do so.

One of the more colorful and flamboyant characters on Chicago's west side over the past two decades has been James “Taildragger” Jones.
The fifty-eight year old was born in Attheimer, Arkansas and was hooked on the blues as a youth while listening to „Randy's Record Mart" out of Nashville. Early influences included Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy Williamson and most of all Howlin' Wolf. After settling in Chicago in 1966, Taildragger began to follow his idol around and eventually got to know Wolf. Jones' nickname comes from Wolf who tagged him with „Taildragger" since he was always late. His first recordings were made for Jimmy Dawkin's Leric label in the early 1980s, and after a stint in Willie Kent's band he contributed to a 1985 release by Austrian based Mojo Blues Band. These sides come from a 1989 session for Wolf Records that resulted in a compilation entitled Johnny Littlejohn's Blues Party. The Nineties have been tough on Jones. After a dispute over money arising from an appearance at the 1993 Chicago Blues Festival, Taildragger shot and killed bluesman Boston Blackie. He professed self defense but was convicted in 1994 in the
shooting and sentenced to four years in the Illinois state prison. Since his release, Jones has began working his way back into the club scene and can once again be found crawling across the floors singing „Crawlin1 Kingsnake" and working the crowd.

Two little known artists featured here are Lee “Little Wolf” Solomon and Jake Dawson. Solomon is a long time west side vocalist who started out in Willie Kent's band in the 1960s and continues to perform in his Wolf influenced style today at clubs like Tee's Lounge and Lili's Blues Bar on the west Side. Jake Dawson spent time with Magic Slim and the Teardrops and also as a long time guitarist with Willie Kent's Gents. This is Dawson's first recording as a front man and shows surprising promise.

Chicago's south and west sides have always been melting pots for the blues. It's where most Chicago blues musicians start, in the dark sweaty clubs where their heroes once worked the crowds. It is here that the voices of the past come back to life. Booba Barnes, Little Wolf and Taildragger all conjur up the power of Howlin' Wolf and borrow from his bag of tricks. It is in these clubs that the music evolves and thrives. It is from here that we find the fresh faces and sounds. And like the heart constantly pumps fresh, new blood out into the body, so do these hotbeds of the blues pump life into the music. Keeping it alive, vital and growing. None of these five artists is ever likely to reach stardom, even in the limited sense of the blues. Only two have ever had an album out. But it is bluesmen like these and countless others that keep it alive night after night. Here is where the pulse can be felt.

More about Chicago Blues Session:

Wolf Records home page - THE VERY BEST IN ORIGINAL CHICAGO & COUNTRY BLUES SINCE 27 YEARS



Tracklist:

01 - Booba Barnes - Louise
02 - Booba Barnes - Heartbroken Man
03 - Booba Barnes - How Many More Years
04 - Booba Barnes - Heartbroken Man (Long Version)
05 - Barkin' Bill Smith - She Leaves You
06 - Barkin' Bill Smith - Lie To Me
07 - Little Wolf - Highway Blues
08 - Little Wolf - Worried 'bout My Baby
09 - Jake Dawson - Somewhere Down The Line
10 - Taildragger - My Heart Is Bald
11 - Taildragger- Highway Bound
12 - Taildragger - My Woman's Gone


Additional info:

1. Covers - 7 Jpeg files, total size - 4.9 Mb


All thanks goes to the original releasers … / special thanks to jazznblues

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