| 12th September 2007 08:17 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Hurricane with a harmonica
At 72, blues great James Cotton is still blowing strong enough to tear apart his instrument.
By Britt Robson, Special to the Star Tribune
Minneapolis-St Paul
September 12, 2007
When: 8 p.m. Fri. • Where: Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Av. S., Mpls. 612-338-2674. • Tickets: $20 advance, $25 door. www.ticketweb.com. • Web: www.jamescottonsuperharp.com.
There are some things that 72-year-old blues titan James Cotton can no longer accomplish. For instance, Cotton, a burly man who weighs at least two-and-a-half bills, says he hasn't executed one of his jaw-dropping backflips onstage for "oh, at least 10, 15 years." And since he underwent throat surgery and radiation treatments in 1994, his gruff-and-ready vocals have likewise been sacrificed.
But the most important thing -- Cotton with a harmonica -- remains. When he envelops this 6-inch rectangle with his meaty hands and brings it to his lips, vocals become superfluous and backflips moot. The chromatic notes and phrases contain the lilting, churning zeal of classic Chicago-style blues, or the sparser and more soulful sound of Memphis. Either way, you can count on Cotton to blow with a rocker's ferocity, to the point where he sometimes bends the holes in the wooden honeycomb of his instrument, or even blows it to pieces.
"It happened last week. I used too much force and blew out one of the keys," Cotton said by phone from his relatively new home in Austin, Texas. "That's hard to do. But I am blowing better than ever at 72 because I don't sing no more. All my energy goes into that harmonica."
Cotton has been fascinated by the power of the harp ever since he heard his mother use it to make noises like a train and a chicken when he was growing up as the youngest of eight children in Tunica, Miss. One day when he was 6, on his way home after bringing water to workers in the cotton fields, he heard a radio coming out of a house.
"It was turned real low, so I got closer," Cotton said. "It was a station out of Arkansas. I'd never heard anything like it. It changed me."
It was a blues show hosted by Rice Miller, aka Sonny Boy Williamson, a galvanic centerpiece of the Memphis and Mississippi blues scene. In no time flat, Cotton could play Sonny Boy's theme song on the Hohner Ace harp he'd gotten for Christmas.
Three years later, his uncle drove Cotton to Memphis so he could play for Sonny Boy himself. Sonny Boy took in the newly orphaned 9-year-old on the spot and brought him on tours of Delta juke joints, to blow his harp outside and attract customers.
"I don't pay any mind to what other people say. Sonny Boy treated me kindly, and we got along real good," Cotton said about the six years he spent with his irascible father figure.
The break came when Sonny Boy followed his wife to Milwaukee two months after she'd left him. "His mind was in such trouble, he was about to go crazy with it," Cotton remembered. "He finally went after her and left me with a band that was all much older than me. I was 15 years old and I thought I could lead them, so I guess I went a little crazy, too." He chuckled. "We lasted about four months."
But Cotton already had a formidable reputation as well as precocious talent. Within two years, he recorded four sides for Sun Records, had a radio show in West Memphis, Ark., and, despite still being underage, was playing inside the juke joints now, alongside legendary blues shouter Howlin' Wolf.
Mojo rising
At 19, Cotton really hit paydirt. He was playing his usual Friday gig in West Memphis when in walked Muddy Waters, the patriarch of modern blues. Harmonica player Junior Wells had just left the most famous blues band in the world, and Muddy wanted Cotton to replace him, at least for that weekend's gig in Memphis. Cotton wound up staying with the band for 12 years.
"I left Muddy because I started to hear this rock 'n' roll music," Cotton said. "I wanted to get into it and I knew I couldn't do it with Muddy, so I quit."
Ironically, Waters was a huge influence on British Invasion-era rockers, and did eventually cross over with projects designed to appeal to a rock audience, including the Grammy-winning "Hard Again" in 1977 with Cotton and guitarist Johnny Winter. But Cotton made his leap in time for the Summer of Love, playing the rock festival circuit as assiduously as he once trolled the juke joints.
When the blues-rock boomlet of the late '60s and '70s subsided, Cotton fell back into more classic blues. He received Grammy nominations for three blues records during the 1980s, and finally bagged a Grammy for "Deep in the Blues," featuring guitarist Joe Louis Walker and jazz bassist Charlie Haden, in 1996.
He continues to put out discs (the most recent is "Baby Don't You Tear My Clothes" in 2004) and to tour for about 60 dates a year. As for a career that has covered more than 60 years and included the biggest names in blues, Cotton gives no quarter.
"I learned from Sonny Boy Williamson and from [renowned harp player] Little Walter, but most of all I had to learn how to be James Cotton and to play like James Cotton. People get on their feet when we play, and it is always new. What we play tonight we won't play tomorrow night; we'll change it up. I have been doing this all my life. And I'll keep doing it until I die."
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
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