It
could have been an unforgettable headache - one of major proportions -
for James Whiting.
Instead, it
turned out to be a case of divine inspiration.
A
well-known New York City street musician at the time, Whiting was
playing underneath the MacDougal Street window of a little old lady at 2
a.m. early one morning.
A little
old lady who was not the least bit impressed, or amused, with Whiting
and his serenading skills, especially at that hour.
“She didn’t appreciate it and reached for the nearest box she could find
to throw at us. And out of the window came this old box of 78s – smash –
on the sidewalk,” he said. “And every record in that box shattered,
except for the one on the top, and that one was “Sugar Blues” by Sidney
Bechet.”
And thus,
James Whiting, who had been searching for a nickname that would help him
stand out from the crowd, was instantly re-christened as Sugar Blue.
“Another
foot to the right and she would have creamed me,” he laughed.
But as
history would have it, Sugar Blue, harpist extraordinaire, would remain
unscathed from that incident in the West Village and his remarkable
journey down the blues highway would continue on.
The very
latest steps on that never-ending trip are Blue's follow-up to his
Code Blue CD, which will be a live disc, and is slated for a summer
2012 release.
The
appropriately-titled Raw Sugar captures Blue and his band –
Ilaria on bass (“My beautiful wife plays bass and she’s in my face and I
like it, laughed Blue), Damiano Della Torre (“a magnificent player”) on
piano, Rico McFarland (“one of the great guitar players in blues today”)
on guitar and James Knowles (“one of the best drummers and he’s been on
every record I’ve done since the 1990s”) on drums, burning down stages
and thrilling audiences at a number of different venues, as only they
can.
Music
surrounded Sugar Blue as a youth, thanks to household visits from some
very famous friends of his mother.
“My mother
was a singer and a dancer back in the days when the Apollo Theater had a
chorus line; she was one of the chorus girls. And Billie Holiday was a
good friend of hers, Ella Fitzgerald was also a friend of the family,
Big Maybelle was also a really close friend, along with a bunch of other
musicians and show-biz people,” Blue said. “And they were always around
the house, even after my mother got out of the business to raise her
kids. And by the time I was 6 or 7, I decided that I wanted to play
music for a living because the people were so exciting and they told
such great stories.
While music
was all around him, it was the sounds of horn-driven jazz that young
Sugar Blue was smitten with, instead of the sounds of the blues.
“There was
the big band stuff that I was listening to when I was a kid, people like
Dexter Gordon, Johnny Hodges … cats like that,” he said. “But see, I’m a
New Yorker and I grew up on the jazz scene during the Verve years. A lot
of that stuff was being played around my house so I heard a lot more of
that than I heard of Chicago blues.”
Then Blue,
along with countless other impressionable youth at the time, was swept
up into the gale force winds that were blowing across the ocean from
England.
“When I got
to be about 16 or 17, I started listening to rock-n-roll – which I
couldn’t do in my mother’s house because she wouldn’t have it – but my
God brother had just introduced me to the British Invasion and I was
listening to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and the rest of those
guys,” Blue said. “And I really sort of ran into Wolf and Muddy Waters
and those guys by reading the backs of the records. I would find an
interesting tune that I liked and then I would look on the back of the
album to see who wrote it.”
One
particular song may very well have been Sugar Blue’s gateway into the
world of the blues.
“I believe
it was “Little Red Rooster” and it was written by Willie Dixon. So I
went to the library and started pulling out all the records that I could
find with Willie Dixon as a writer and a performer,” he said. “And many
of those were songs by Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin’
Wolf. So that was how I came into the Chicago blues.”
While the
hallowed names of Dixon, Wolf and Muddy all played pivotal roles in the
formation of The Rolling Stones (even providing them with their name),
in turn, those young British musicians helped turn on young music lovers
in the United States onto what was happening right under their own
noses, in their own backyard.
“It’s a
good thing those cats picked up on the music, because we seemed to have
missed it here at home,” Blue said. “And as Willie Dixon said – and no
one has said it better – 'The blues are the roots and the rest of the
music is the fruit.'”
As
circumstance would have it, Sugar Blue would later go on to play with
Willie Dixon in the Chicago Blues All-Stars for a couple of years, the
very man responsible for helping lead him down the path of the blues to
begin with.
“I met
Willie Dixon through Victoria Spivey. I went to a performance with him
and Victoria and it was really a strange evening,” said Blue. “Victoria
also introduced me to her quote-unquote ‘son’ who was sitting in a
corner hiding from everybody. I said, ‘Who is that?’ And she said, ‘Oh,
that’s Bob.’ And I looked over and it was Dylan! I’m like, ‘That’s your
son? Oh, this is going to be one of those nights!’ We had Willie Dixon
and Carey Bell on one side and Bob Dylan on the other and Victoria
Spivey in the middle, bringing it all together.”
But Spivey
did more than just introduce Sugar Blue to Willie Dixon and Bob Dylan
that night.
“That was
also the night that she told Bob that I was going to be on his next
record,” Blue said. “And he looked at her quite seriously and said,
‘Yes, mam.’”
And
although Sugar Blue did indeed play on the sessions that wound up being
Dylan’s Desire album, his work didn’t make it on the original
disc. However, “Catfish Blues” featuring Sugar Blue on harp, was finally
issued on Dylan’s Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased)
1961-1991.
Spivey also
turned out to indirectly play a role in what turned out to be a major
turning point for Sugar Blue - his decision to leave the United States
for Paris, France.
“Victoria
introduced me to Memphis Slim, who was playing at a club in the West
Village called the Top of the Gate. I asked him if I could sit in with
him and he said, “Well son, you can sit in with me, but you’d better be
able to play.’ And we played and thank goodness, he liked it,” said
Blue. “And then I asked him how he thought they would accept me in
Paris. And he said, “Well, they like Sonny Boy and you can play pretty
good, so if you’ve got the temerity for it, come along and join me.”
So with
those words of advice ringing in his ears, a mere three weeks later, in
the fall of 1977, Sugar Blue was in the City of Lights, doing his thing.
Only thing
was, he wasn’t doing his thing with Memphis Slim, the cat that
encouraged him to come to Paris.
“I’d see
Slim around and he’d wave to me and he’d keep going. Well, I was doing a
lot of busking on the streets there and eventually I ran into The
Rolling Stones. And then I did “Miss You” and all that stuff with them
and then I also ran into Frank Zappa and joined him onstage and we had a
good time,” Blue said. “And I played with Luther Allison and started to
make some waves over there. And the next time I ran into Slim, he said,
‘Hi. Come on over here, boy,’ and he waved me over. We talked and
laughed and he invited me to play with him at this big stage there in
Paris. And at some point, I asked him why when I came over (moved to
Paris) that he didn’t (talk to him or ask him to play) … and he said,
‘Well son, first I had to see if you were serious about your music,
because I’m too old to waste my time teaching you kids.’ So after he saw
I was really about it, he did decide to help me and he ended up
mentoring me in many ways.”
Leaving the
comfort and familiarity of your home country to go overseas - to a place
you’ve never been - without a job or without many contacts, has to be a
gutsy and nerve-racking path in order to make a living playing the
blues.
“I just
said, ‘I’m gone,’ you know? It was like it was time to pursue the
adventure of a lifetime,” said Blue. “I had known since I had gotten out
of the army that this was going to be my life and if I was going to make
it my life, I had to take the chances that were required to make it, you
know? If you’re not willing to risk everything, don’t mess around with
art because art is no place for the cowardly.”
Blue's
Paris experience probably hit its zenith with his hook-up with The
Rolling Stones.
“They had
heard me playing with the great Louisiana Red, God rest his soul, he was
one of my mentors when I was younger, and they heard me playing on a
record with him in ‘75 or ‘76, or something like that. And Keith heard
it and then heard about me playing around there (Paris) and said, 'Wait
a minute, let's get this kid.' And the rest is rock-n-roll history, as
they like to say,” said Blue.
Blue's
gritty, earthy harp work fit what The Stones were doing like a hand in a
glove. His playing sends “Miss You” and “Some Girls” into the
stratosphere, with his genius blast of blues harp stomping all over the
disco beat that underpins “Miss You.” He would also end up on the
group's next two studio outings –
Emotional Rescue and
Tattoo
You.
“It was
really incredible to be on a record (“Miss You) that was responsible for
the resurgence of that band,” Blue said. “And actually being an
important and intrinsic part of the song, one that was the biggest song
in the history of the band, really says something about how important
the blues is to the music and how important it is to them as a musical
entity.”
Maybe the
most impressive thing about his studio sessions with The Stones was the
amount of freedom the notoriously stubborn group gave Blue.
“Nobody
gives me my freedom. Either you like what I do or you don't,” he said.
“There are other guys out here if you don't like what I do. They gave me
my heading and then they got out of the way.”
After his
time in Paris, Sugar Blue returned back home to the United States and
has not slowed down one bit since his arrival back on these shores.
And
thankfully, these days, no one is throwing musty, dusty boxes of 78s out
of their window at him.
“We’re
working and writing songs like crazy, man. We are writing some
wonderful, wonderful songs,” said Blue. “I’m so excited about the music
we’re making today. Not only do we have the Raw Sugar album we’re
getting ready to put in the can, but the (studio) record for next year
is on its feet and I’m about ready to throw the switch and the current’s
going to go through it and … it’s alive! It’s alive! Ha, ha! So that’s
what we’re doing right now. You know, you gotta’ live note-by-note,
day-by-day - and basically that’s what I’m doing.”
Photos by
Michael Kurgansky and Bob Kieser as marked © 2012
Hey Blues
Fans,
145th
Street – Where The Blues Lives
Microwave
Dave and the Nukes – Last Time I Saw You
The
Michael Landau Group - Organic Instrumentals
The
Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise - All Jams on Deck
Lurrie
Bell - The Devil Ain’t Got No Music
Nathan
James and the Rhythm Scratchers - What You Make of It