| 12th September 2006 01:22 PM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
Q&A with James Cotton
The living legend harp player performs at Saturday's Taste of the Blue Ridge Blues and Jazz Festival
http://www.roanoke.com/entertainment/insideout/music/wb/xp-81527
By Tad Dickens | 777-6474
Sept 7,2006
James "Superharp" Cotton has maybe been the luckiest blues player you've ever heard of. Born in Tunica, Miss., he was playing with harmonica legend Sonny Boy Williamson by the time he was nine. By about 15, he was with another iconic bluesman, Howlin' Wolf.
From there, it was on to Muddy Waters' and his groundbreaking Chicago band, and a solo career that included classic recordings with a host of 60s and 70s era rock artists. On Saturday, he performs in Roanoke, headlining the Taste of the Blue Ridge Blues & Jazz Festival. Here are excerpts from an interview with Cotton.
The first time you heard the harmonica, your mother was playing it. Talk about what you heard and what you thought of that.
I was one of nine kids. I’m the baby. My mama would sit on the side of the bed at night and play for me. She played the sounds of a freight train, sounds of chickens. I thought that was the only kind of sounds a harp made. I liked it. I wanted to know how to do that …
Then I listened to Sonny Boy. He was playing blues with the harmonica.
I could only play the train on it. I started listening to that every day on an old battery radio … I listened to him every time I got a chance (on radio shows such as "King Biscuit Time.")
My father was a Baptist preacher, so I couldn’t play it (the blues) in the house … I’d go over to a neighbor kid’s house … We’d go out in the woods or something, and I’d play it.
Then my mother’s brother, I was his pet. (After Cotton's parents died) I started staying with him. He found out I could play harmonica a little bit. He bought me one.
By nine years old, I working in the fields … My uncle said, this ain’t no place for you. He took me to Sonny Boy. He said he’s a good kid. someday he could be a very good harp player.
So Sonny Boy put me on (at age nine, Cotton was performing; by age 15, Williamson’s band was his).
Sonny boy followed his wife to Milwaukee and he gave me the band … I couldn’t (handle the business end of it). But I could play with him. I didn’t know the business end. I just played harp.
(The band) lasted 8 months after that.
Talk about Mr. Williamson (real name: Rice Miller) and what you learned from him.
I would do it all over again, if I had to do it … He liked to chase womens, drink whiskey and had a real bad mouth. I didn’t act quite like that. Some of it I picked up, and some of it I didn’t. He would cut you if you messed with him. I never cut nobody in my life like that.
As a teenager, you traveled to Arkansas to see Howlin’ Wolf (Chester Burnett, and you wound up joining his band. What’s the story behind that?
We came up to West Memphis, Ark., where I met him. He give me a job playing with him. (The job lasted about three years)
(On playing with Wolf) it’s a feeling, I don’t know the name of it, but a feeling you can’t get nowhere else.
It seems that at every turn, you’ve been in the right place at the right time. Which has been more important to your career, luck or talent?
I think between the two of them, it’s got it. I didn’t go to school for none of it. I just picked it up.
In the late 1950s, you joined Muddy Waters’ band, staying with him for a dozen years. Talk about how you got that job.
1954, went to a little restaurant in West Memphis, Arkansas. At the time, I was between jobs. I was driving a truck. Hauling gravel and concrete … This guy walked up to me and said, “Are you James Cotton?”
I said yes, and he said, “I’m Muddy Waters.”
I didn’t believe him, that he was Muddy Waters.
What did it take to convince you?
Well, he gave me a job. (laughter)
I said, I don’t believe this, but I’m going to go see. Got on stage, play a couple of songs with the band, and after a while a man comes up and says “Here he is, the one and only Muddy Waters.”
Before he could sing the first 12 bars, I knew it was him … and especially when he picked up the guitar.
For a long time, he wanted you to play like Little Walter. How did you get him to allow you to be yourself?
I played that country style and Walter played city style. So when it come to making records, Muddy would take Little Walter into the studio with him. And he took me to play the gigs. He told me to play just like Walter. I finally told him, “I’ll never be little Walter, but I can be myself.
Then we played the Newport Jazz Festival in 1961. We did a live recording of “I’ve Got My Mojo Working,” (That had been) the biggest hit he ever had. I was playing like myself.
That’s one of the best feelings that I ever had, because I felt I was part of the band then, and playing something that made me feel good and made him feel good. When we did it live, I got a chance to cut loose.
By 1966, you were also leading your own band, but you were also called to play with many 60s and 70s icons such as the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Steve Miller, Santana, Janis Joplin. How did all that come about?
Paul Butterfield (of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band). I taught him to play harmonica (in Chicago, Butterfield was among a group of young men who gravitated to the blues scene about the same time that Cotton was playing with Waters).
He was out there doing it, and I was still in Muddy’s band. When my band started, Paul called (manager) Albert Grossman, he had all these acts, and he started sticking me with them. He said, “Where’d you get this bluesman?”
In 1994, you had throat surgery and radiation treatments. Did you have throat cancer?
Cancer in the throat. I was playing again 28 days (after surgery). I had surgery on a Monday. The next Monday, I started radiation … I couldn’t sing (after that), and I still don’t sing, but the harmonica can sing for me.
By 1996, you had recorded “Deep in the Blues,” which won a Grammy for best traditional blues album. How gratifying was that to know that your playing was still being validated after so many decades?
I didn’t know what to say. Or what to do either. I’d been nominated a couple of times, but I never did win.
I was spellbound. I didn’t know what to say. I had all this big story ready to talk about if I win. But I didn’t know what to say.
This is your 62nd year in the music business. What are the memories that stand out most?
To play with people like Sonny Boy and Muddy Waters. Howlin’ Wolf. Those people kind of showed me the way.
What can people expect to hear from you at the Taste of the Blue Ridge Blues and Jazz Festival?
Good music and a good show. I play harp like a good harp player should play a show.
|
| 13th September 2006 10:22 AM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
I saw this guy once back in the 70's.
He blew the doors off the place. Great man.
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
|
